Canopy recovery after drought dieback in holm‐oak Mediterranean forests of Catalonia (NE Spain)

By F. Lloret, D. Siscart, Carles Dalmases. 2004

269 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Climate change is likely to produce more frequent and longer droughts in the Mediterranean region, like that of 1994, which produced important changes in the Quercus ilex forests, with up to 76% of the trees showing complete canopy dieback. At the landscape level, a mosaic of responses to the drought was observed, linked to the distribution of lithological substrates. Damage to the dominant tree species (Q. ilex) and the most common understorey shrub (Erica arborea) was more noticeable on the compact substrates (breccia) than on the fissured ones (schist). This result was consistent with observations documenting deeper root penetration in schist than in breccia materials, allowing the plants growing on fissured substrates to use water from deeper soil levels. Smaller plants were more vulnerable to drought than larger plants in the trees, but not in the shrubs. Overall, Q. ilex was more affected than E. arborea. The resilience of the system was evaluated from the canopy recovery 1 year after the episode. Stump and crown resprouting was fairly extensive, but the damage pattern in relation to substrate, plant size, and species remained similar. The effect of recurrent drought episodes was studied on vegetation patches of Q. ilex located on mountain slopes and surrounded by bare rock. We observed that plants that resprouted weakly after a previous drought in 1985 were more likely to die or to produce poor regeneration in 1995 than plants that had resprouted vigorously. Vegetation patches located on the lower part of the slope were also less damaged than patches situated uphill. The study provides evidence of relevant changes in forest canopy as a consequence of extreme climate events. The distribution of this effect across the landscape is mediated by lithological substrate, causing patchy patterns. The results also support the hypothesis that recurrent droughts can produce a progressive loss of resilience, by depleting the ability of surviving plants to regenerate.

Subfields: Atmospheric Science, Global and Planetary Change, Nature and Landscape Conservation

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/a41c89785c09b518f0b95d49bb519ade9d2e49a9

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Citations in the corpus

Extreme climatic events and vegetation: the role of stabilizing processes (2012, background): “Most efforts to analyze the effect of extreme climatic events have focused on the existence of critical thresholds and contributing factors: site quality (Lloret et al., 2004; Suarez et al., 2004), variations in species and individual responses (e.”
Climate increases regional tree‐growth variability in Iberian pine forests (2007, background): “Shared growth variability can be interpreted as a common response to regional climatic signals (Tardif et al., 2003; Macias et al., 2004), and its changes along the 20th century as a signal of climatic changes which have affected the growth of the forests (Macias et al., 2006).”
Drought-related tree death of savanna eucalypts: Species susceptibility, soil conditions and root architecture (2007, background): “Drought has the capacity to cause widespread treedeath in semi-arid environments (e.g. Allen & Breshears 1998; Villalba & Veblen 1998; Lloret et al. 2004).”
Components of tree resilience: effects of successive low‐growth episodes in old ponderosa pine forests (2011, unknown): “Severe drought periods often result in canopy defoliation (Lloret et al. 2004, Breda et al. 2006) and subsequent reductions of tree ring growth (Millar et al. 2007).”
Mechanisms of plant survival and mortality during drought: why do some plants survive while others succumb to drought? (2008, background): “…of root density as a function of soil water availability (VanSplunder et al., 1996; Volaire et al., 1998; Ewers et al., 2000; Hacke et al., 2000; Lloret et al., 2004; West et al., 2007b); (vi) ratio of root absorbing area to leaf area (Ewers et al., 2000; Hacke et al., 2000; Magnani et al.,…”
Plant community changes induced by experimental climate change: Seedling and adult species composition (2009, background): “Adult mortality probably emerges over the course of longer periods, due to the accumulation of drought effects or after drier conditions surpass survival thresholds (Peñuelas et al., 2001; Lloret et al., 2004c).”
Emergent insects, pathogens and drought shape changing patterns in oak decline in North America and Europe (2015, background): “…have found that oak growth and other physiological functions are gradually weakened by successive droughts, whereby mortality may not occur until after a second or third debilitating drought is endured (Jenkins and Pallardy, 1995; Lloret et al., 2004; Voelker et al., 2008; Haavik et al., 2011).”
Plant guilds drive biomass response to global warming and water availability in subalpine grassland (2006, background): “Increased frequency of extreme climatic events involving recurrent drought is expected to reduce ecosystem resilience to stress in the Mediterranean ( Lloret, Siscart & Dalmases 2005 ).”
Do plants remember drought? : Hints towards a drought-memory in grasses (2011, unknown): “The observed changes in reaction to recurrent drought are not in accordance with findings indicating reduced resistance or resilience after having already been exposed to drought stress before (Lloret et al., 2004; Zavalloni et al., 2008).”