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Globally consistent climate sensitivity of natural disturbances across boreal and temperate forest ecosystems |
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| Authors: | Rupert Seidl Juha Honkaniemi Tuomas Aakala Alexey Aleinikov Per Angelstam Mathieu Bouchard Yan Boulanger Philip J Burton Louis De Grandpré Sylvie Gauthier Winslow D Hansen Jane U Jepsen Kalev Jõgiste Daniel D Kneeshaw Timo Kuuluvainen Olga Lisitsyna Kobayashi Makoto Akira S Mori Deepa S Pureswaran Ekaterina Shorohova Elena Shubnitsina Anthony R Taylor Nadezhda Vladimirova Floortje Vodde Cornelius Senf |
| Institution: | 1. Univ. of Natural Resources and Life Sciences (BOKU) Vienna, Wien, Austria;2. Univ. of Natural Resources and Life Sciences (BOKU) Vienna, Wien, Austria
Natural Resources Inst. Finland (Luke), Helsinki, Finland;3. Dept of Forest Sciences, Univ. of Helsinki, Finland;4. Center for Forest Ecology and Productivity, Russian Academy of Sciences, Moscow, Russia;5. Faculty of Forest Sciences, Swedish Univ. of Agricultural Sciences, Skinnskatteberg, Sweden;6. Forest Research Branch, Quebec Ministry of Natural Resources, Quebec, QC, Canada;7. Natural Resources Canada, Canadian Forest Service, Laurentian Forestry Centre, Québec, QC, Canada;8. Univ. of Northern British Columbia, Terrace, BC, Canada;9. Earth Inst., Columbia Univ., New York City, NY, USA;10. Norwegian Inst. for Nature Research, Fram Centre, Tromsø, Norway;11. Estonian Univ. of Life Sciences, Tartu, Estonia;12. Dept of Biological Sciences, Center for Forest Research, Univ. of Quebec at Montreal, Montreal, Canada;13. Dept of Geology, Tallinn Univ. of Technology, Tallinn, Estonia;14. Field Science Center for Northern Biosphere, Hokkaido Univ., Horonobe, Japan;15. Graduate School of Environment and Information Sciences, Yokohama National Univ., Yokohama, Japan;16. Saint-Petersburg State Univ., University Embankment, St Petersburg, Russia Forest Research Inst. of the Karelian Research Centre, Russian Academy of Science, Petrozavodsk, Russia;17. ‘Yugyd Va’ National Park, Vuktyl, Komi Republic, Russia;18. Natural Resources Canada, Canadian Forest Service – Atlantic Forestry Centre, Fredericton, NB, Canada;19. ‘Denezhkin Kamen’ Nature Reserve, Severouralsk, Sverdlovsk region, Russia;20. Univ. of Natural Resources and Life Sciences (BOKU) Vienna, Wien, Austria Technical Univ. of Munich, Freising, Germany |
| Abstract: | Disturbance regimes are changing in forests across the world in response to global climate change. Despite the profound impacts of disturbances on ecosystem services and biodiversity, assessments of disturbances at the global scale remain scarce. Here, we analyzed natural disturbances in boreal and temperate forest ecosystems for the period 2001–2014, aiming to 1) quantify their within- and between-biome variation and 2) compare the climate sensitivity of disturbances across biomes. We studied 103 unmanaged forest landscapes with a total land area of 28.2 × 106 ha, distributed across five continents. A consistent and comprehensive quantification of disturbances was derived by combining satellite-based disturbance maps with local expert knowledge of disturbance agents. We used Gaussian finite mixture models to identify clusters of landscapes with similar disturbance activity as indicated by the percent forest area disturbed as well as the size, edge density and perimeter–area-ratio of disturbed patches. The climate sensitivity of disturbances was analyzed using Bayesian generalized linear mixed effect models and a globally consistent climate dataset. Within-biome variation in natural disturbances was high in both boreal and temperate biomes, and disturbance patterns did not vary systematically with latitude or biome. The emergent clusters of disturbance activity in the boreal zone were similar to those in the temperate zone, but boreal landscapes were more likely to experience high disturbance activity than their temperate counterparts. Across both biomes high disturbance activity was particularly associated with wildfire, and was consistently linked to years with warmer and drier than average conditions. Natural disturbances are a key driver of variability in boreal and temperate forest ecosystems, with high similarity in the disturbance patterns between both biomes. The universally high climate sensitivity of disturbances across boreal and temperate ecosystems indicates that future climate change could substantially increase disturbance activity. |
| Keywords: | boreal forest climate variability disturbance regimes remote sensing spatial patterns temperate forest |