Summary
Published in Nature Communications 10: 1265. doi:10.1038/s41467-019-09265-z
Predicting future ecosystem dynamics depends critically on an improved understanding of how disturbances and climate change have driven long-term ecological changes in the past. Here we assembled a dataset of >100,000 tree species lists from the 19th century across a broad region (>130,000km2) in temperate eastern Canada, as well as recent forest inventories, to test the effects of changes in anthropogenic disturbance, temperature and moisture on forest dynamics. We evaluate changes in forest composition using four indices quantifying the affinities of co-occurring tree species with temperature, drought, light and disturbance. Land-use driven shifts favouring more disturbance-adapted tree species are far stronger than any effects ascribable to climate change, although the responses of species to disturbance are correlated with their expected responses to climate change. As such, anthropogenic and natural disturbances are expected to have large direct effects on forests and also indirect effects via altered responses to future climate change.
Sector(s):
Forests
Categorie(s):
Scientific Article
Theme(s):
Ecosystems and Environment, Forest Ecology, Forestry Research, Forests
Author(s)
DANNEYROLLES, Victor, Sébastien DUPUIS, Gabriel FORTIN, Marie LEROYER, André DE RÖMER, Raphaële TERRAIL, Mark VELLEND, Yan BOUCHER, Jason LAFLAMME, Yves BERGERON and Dominique ARSENEAULT
Year of publication :
2019
How to get the publication :
ISSN
2041-1723
Keywords :
forêt tempérée, archives d'arpentage primitif, changement de composition, changement climatique, écologie forestière, article scientifique de recherche forestière, forestry research scientific article, forest ecology, temperate and boreal forest, Land survey, compositional change, disturbance, climate change
