Understanding and predicting forest mortality in the western United States using long‐term forest inventory data and modeled hydraulic damage
- 28 October 2020
- journal article
- research article
- Published by Wiley in New Phytologist
- Vol. 230 (5), 1896-1910
- https://doi.org/10.1111/nph.17043
Abstract
Global warming is expected to exacerbate the duration and intensity of droughts in western United States (US), which may lead to increased tree mortality. A prevailing proximal mechanism of drought‐induced tree mortality is hydraulic damage, but predicting tree mortality from hydraulic theory and climate data still remains a major scientific challenge. We used forest inventory data and a plant hydraulic model (HM) to address three questions: Can we capture regional patterns of drought‐induced tree mortality with HM‐predicted damage thresholds? Do HM metrics improve predictions of mortality across broad spatial areas? What are the dominant controls of forest mortality when considering stand characteristics, climate metrics, and simulated hydraulic stress? We found that the amount of variance explained by models predicting mortality was limited (R2 median = 0.10, R2 range = 0.00 to 0.52). HM outputs, including hydraulic damage and carbon assimilation diagnostics, moderately improve mortality prediction across the western US compared to models using stand and climate predictors alone. Among factors considered, metrics of stand density and tree size tended to be some of the most critical factors explaining mortality, likely highlighting the important roles of structural overshoot, stand development, and biotic agent host selection and outbreaks in mortality patterns.Keywords
Funding Information
- U.S. Department of Agriculture (2018‐67012‐31496)
This publication has 91 references indexed in Scilit:
- The Impact of Winter and Spring Temperatures on Temperate Tree Budburst Dates: Results from an Experimental Climate ManipulationPLOS ONE, 2012
- HCV 6a Prevalence in Guangdong Province Had the Origin from Vietnam and Recent Dissemination to Other Regions of China: Phylogeographic AnalysesPLOS ONE, 2012
- Causes and implications of the correlation between forest productivity and tree mortality ratesEcological Monographs, 2011
- The contribution of competition to tree mortality in old-growth coniferous forestsForest Ecology and Management, 2011
- Effects and etiology of sudden aspen decline in southwestern Colorado, USAForest Ecology and Management, 2010
- Xylem function and growth rate interact to determine recovery rates after exposure to extreme water deficitNew Phytologist, 2010
- Mechanisms of plant survival and mortality during drought: why do some plants survive while others succumb to drought?New Phytologist, 2008
- A Caution Regarding Rules of Thumb for Variance Inflation FactorsQuality & Quantity, 2007
- Attack preference of Ips pini on Pinus ponderosa in northern Arizona: tree size and bole positionAgricultural and Forest Entomology, 2006
- Shoot dieback during prolonged drought in Ceanothus (Rhamnaceae) chaparral of California: a possible case of hydraulic failureAmerican Journal of Botany, 2002