Soil drought sets site specific limits to stem radial growth and sap flow of Douglas-fir across Germany.

Introduction: Soil drought during summer in Central Europe has become more frequent and severe over the last decades. European forests are suffering increasing damage, particularly Norway spruce. Douglas-fir (Pseudotsuga menziesii (Mirbel) Franco), a non-native tree species, is considered as a promising alternative to build drought-resilient forests. The main goal of this study was to investigate the intraannual radial stem growth and sap flow performance of Douglas-fir along a precipitation gradient across Germany under severe drought. Material and methods: Sap flow and stem radial changes of up to ten trees each at four sites with different precipitation regimes were measured in combination with volumetric soil water content during the growing season of 2022. Measurements of stem radial changes were used to calculate the trees' stem water deficit, a proxy for tree water status and drought stress. Results: The severe summer drought of 2022 led to an early growth cessation and a significant reduction in daily sap flow at all four sites monitored. We could identify a site-specific threshold in soil water availability ranging between 21.7 and 29.6% of relative extractable water (REW) under which stem water reserves cannot be replenished and thereby inhibiting radial growth. We could also demonstrate that at this threshold, sap flow is heavily reduced to between 43.5 and 53.3%, and for a REW below 50%, sap flow linearly decreases by 1.1-2.0% per 1% reduction in REW. This reduction tends to follow the humidity gradient, being more pronounced at the most oceanic characterized site and suggesting an adaptation to site conditions. Even though Douglas-fir is considered to be more drought stress resistant than Norway spruce, growth and sap flow are greatly reduced by severe summer drought, which became more frequent in recent years and their frequency and intensity is likely to increase. Conclusions: Our results suggest that timber production of Douglas-fir in Central Europe will decline considerably under projected climate change, and thus pointing to site specific growth constraints for a so far promising non-native tree species in Europe.

Legacy of last millennium timber use on plant cover in Central Europe: Insights from tree rings and pollen.

Throughout history, humans have relied on wood for constructions, tool production or as an energy source. How and to what extent these human activities have impacted plant abundance and composition over a long-term perspective is, however, not well known. To address this knowledge gap, we combined 44,239 precisely dated tree-ring samples from economically and ecologically important tree species (spruce, fir, pine, oak) from historical buildings, and pollen-based plant cover estimates using the REVEALS model from 169 records for a total of 34 1° × 1° grid cells for Central Europe. Building activity and REVEALS estimates were compared for the entire study region (4-15°E, 46-51°N), and for low (<500 m asl) and mid/high elevations (≥500 m asl) in 100-year time windows over the period 1150-1850. Spruce and oak were more widely used in wooden constructions, amounting to 35 % and 32 %, respectively, compared to pine and fir. Besides wood properties and species abundance, tree diameters of harvested individuals, being similar for all four species, were found to be the most crucial criterion for timber selection throughout the last millennium. Regarding land use changes, from the 1150-1250's onwards, forest cover generally decreased due to deforestation until 1850, especially at lower elevations, resulting in a more heterogeneous landscape. The period 1650-1750 marks a distinct change in the environmental history of Central Europe; increasing agriculture and intense forest management practices were introduced to meet the high demands of an increasing population and intensifying industrialization, causing a decrease in palynological diversity, especially at low elevations. Likely the characteristic vegetation structure and composition of contemporary landscapes originated from that period. We further show that land use has impacted vegetation composition and diversity at an increasing speed leading to a general homogenization of landscapes through time, highlighting the limited environmental benefits of even-aged plantation forestry.

Identifying drivers of non-stationary climate-growth relationships of European beech.

The future performance of the widely abundant European beech (Fagus sylvatica L.) across its ecological amplitude is uncertain. Although beech is considered drought-sensitive and thus negatively affected by drought events, scientific evidence indicating increasing drought vulnerability under climate change on a cross-regional scale remains elusive. While evaluating changes in climate sensitivity of secondary growth offers a promising avenue, studies from productive, closed-canopy forests suffer from knowledge gaps, especially regarding the natural variability of climate sensitivity and how it relates to radial growth as an indicator of tree vitality. Since beech is sensitive to drought, we in this study use a drought index as a climate variable to account for the combined effects of temperature and water availability and explore how the drought sensitivity of secondary growth varies temporally in dependence on growth variability, growth trends, and climatic water availability across the species' ecological amplitude. Our results show that drought sensitivity is highly variable and non-stationary, though consistently higher at dry sites compared to moist sites. Increasing drought sensitivity can largely be explained by increasing climatic aridity, especially as it is exacerbated by climate change and trees' rank progression within forest communities, as (co-)dominant trees are more sensitive to extra-canopy climatic conditions than trees embedded in understories. However, during the driest periods of the 20th century, growth showed clear signs of being decoupled from climate. This may indicate fundamental changes in system behavior and be early-warning signals of decreasing drought tolerance. The multiple significant interaction terms in our model elucidate the complexity of European beech's drought sensitivity, which needs to be taken into consideration when assessing this species' response to climate change.