Increasing atmospheric dryness reduces boreal forest tree growth.

Rising atmospheric vapour pressure deficit (VPD) associated with climate change affects boreal forest growth via stomatal closure and soil dryness. However, the relationship between VPD and forest growth depends on the climatic context. Here we assess Canadian boreal forest responses to VPD changes from 1951-2018 using a well-replicated tree-growth increment network with approximately 5,000 species-site combinations. Of the 3,559 successful growth models, we observed a relationship between growth and concurrent summer VPD in one-third of the species-site combinations, and between growth and prior summer VPD in almost half of those combinations. The relationship between previous year VPD and current year growth was almost exclusively negative, while current year VPD also tended to reduce growth. Tree species, age, annual temperature, and soil moisture primarily determined tree VPD responses. Younger trees and species like white spruce and Douglas fir exhibited higher VPD sensitivity, as did areas with high annual temperature and low soil moisture. Since 1951, summer VPD increases in Canada have paralleled tree growth decreases, particularly in spruce species. Accelerating atmospheric dryness in the decades ahead will impair carbon storage and societal-economic services.

30 Years of postdisturbance recruitment in a Neotropical forest.

QUESTIONS: Long-term community response to disturbance can follow manifold successional pathways depending on the interplay between various recruitment processes. Analyzing the succession of recruited communities provides a long-term perspective on forest response to disturbance. Specifically, postdisturbance recruitment trajectories assess (a) the successive phases of postdisturbance response and the role of deterministic recruitment processes, and (b) the return to predisturbance state of recruits taxonomic/functional diversity/composition. LOCATION: Amazonian rainforest, Paracou station, French Guiana. METHODS: We analyzed trajectories of recruited tree communities, from twelve forest plots of 6.25 ha each, during 30 years following a disturbance gradient that ranged from 10% to 60% of aboveground biomass removed. We measured recruited community taxonomic composition turnover, compared to whole predisturbance community, and assessed their functional composition by measuring the community weighted means for seven leaf, stem, and life-history functional traits. We also measured recruited community taxonomic richness, taxonomic evenness, and functional diversity and compared them to the diversity values from a random recruitment process. RESULTS: While control plots trajectories resembled random recruitment trajectories, postdisturbance trajectories diverged significantly. This divergence corresponded to an enhanced recruitment of light-demanding species that became dominant above a disturbance intensity threshold. After breakpoints in time, though, recruitment trajectories returned to diversity values and composition similar to those of predisturbance and control plots community. CONCLUSIONS: Following disturbance, recruitment processes specific to undisturbed community were first replaced by the emergence of more restricted, deterministic recruitment processes favoring species with efficient light use and acquisition. Then, a second phase corresponded to a decades-long recovery of recruits predisturbance taxonomic and functional diversity and composition that remained unachieved after 30 years.