The Arabidopsis leucine-rich repeat receptor-like kinase MIK2 is a crucial component of early immune responses to a fungal-derived elicitor

- Fusarium spp. cause severe economic damage in many crops, exemplified by Panama Disease of banana or Fusarium head blight of wheat. Plants sense immunogenic patterns (termed elicitors) at the cell surface to initiate pattern-triggered immunity (PTI). Knowledge of fungal elicitors and corresponding plant immune-signaling is incomplete but could yield valuable sources of resistance. - We characterized Arabidopsis thaliana PTI responses to a peptide elicitor fraction present in several Fusarium spp. and employed a forward-genetic screen using plants containing a cytosolic calcium reporter to isolate fusarium elicitor reduced elicitation (fere) mutants. - We mapped the causal mutation in fere1 to the leucine-rich repeat receptor-like kinase MDIS1-INTERACTING RECEPTOR-LIKE KINASE 2 (MIK2) and confirmed a crucial role of MIK2 in fungal elicitor perception. MIK2-dependent elicitor responses depend on known signaling components and transfer of AtMIK2 is sufficient to confer elicitor sensitivity to Nicotiana benthamiana. - Arabidopsis senses Fusarium elicitors by a novel receptor complex at the cell surface that feeds into common PTI pathways. These data increase mechanistic understanding of PTI to Fusarium and place MIK2 at a central position in Arabidopsis elicitor responses

A model-based analysis of climate change vulnerability of Pinus pinea stands under multiobjective management in the Northern Plateau of Spain

Key message Climate change is likely to heavily affect the provision of goods and services of Mediterranean forests. Our results strongly point out the need to develop adaptive strategies to mitigate the impact of climate change in order to assure the maintenance of the stands aiming their multifunctionality, more than their monetary revenues. Context Climate change in the Mediterranean region may heavily affect the provision of forest goods and services. Thus, options for adaptive forest management should be proposed. Aims The aims of this study are to analyze the climate-related sensitivity of Pinus pinea forests in the Northern Plateau in Spain and to assess the vulnerability of multiobjective forest management to climate change by means of a simulation study, focusing on timber and cone production. Methods The forest model PICUS v1.41, integrating a module for P. pinea cone and nut production, was used to simulate P. pinea stands at six site types under three forest management regimes (focus on timber, cones, and combined objectives) and five climate scenarios (current climate, four climate scenarios combining increases in temperature by +1 and +4 °C and decreases in precipitation by −10 and −30 %). Results Combined timber + cones management generated always the highest incomes from timber and cones. With the exception of the most productive site types, the combined timber + cone management produced also more timber volume than the cone and timber managements. Provisioning of ecosystem services decreased at all sites under all climate change scenarios. At very dry sites simulated, forests suffered from dieback events. Conclusion Provisioning of ecosystem services decreased at all sites under all climate change scenarios analyzed and will be extremely limited on poor sites. Benefits and weaknesses of the assessment approach are discussed. © 2015, INRA and Springer-Verlag France

Climate change impacts, adaptive capacity, and vulnerability of European forest ecosystems

This study compiles and summarizes the existing knowledge about observed and projected impacts of climate change on forests in Europe. Forests will have to adapt not only to changes in mean climate variables but also to increased variability with greater risk of extreme weather events, such as prolonged drought, storms and floods. Sensitivity, potential impacts, adaptive capacity, and vulnerability to climate change are reviewed for European forests. The most important potential impacts of climate change on forest goods and services are summarized for the Boreal, Temperate Oceanic, Temperate Continental, Mediterranean, and mountainous regions. Especially in northern and western Europe the increasing atmospheric CO2 content and warmer temperatures are expected to result in positive effects on forest growth and wood production, at least in the short–medium term. On the other hand, increasing drought and disturbance risks will cause adverse effects. These negative impacts are very likely to outweigh positive trends in southern and eastern Europe. From west to east, the drought risk increases. In the Mediterranean regions productivity is expected to decline due to strongly increased droughts and fire risks. Adaptive capacity consists of the inherent adaptive capacity of trees and forest ecosystems and of socio-economic factors determining the capability to implement planned adaptation. The adaptive capacity in the forest sector is relatively large in the Boreal and the Temperate Oceanic regions, more constrained by socio-economic factors in the Temperate Continental, and most limited in the Mediterranean region where large forest areas are only extensively managed or unmanaged. Potential impacts and risks are best studied and understood with respect to wood production. It is clear that all other goods and services provided by European forests will also be impacted by climate change, but much less knowledge is available to quantify these impacts. Understanding of adaptive capacity and regional vulnerability to climate change in European forests is not well developed and requires more focussed research efforts. An interdisciplinary research agenda integrated with monitoring networks and projection models is needed to provide information at all levels of decision making, from policy development to the management unit

Reviewing the Science and Implementation of Climate Change Adaptation Measures in European Forestry

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Are forest disturbances amplifying or canceling out climate change-induced productivity changes in European forests?

Altres ajuts: COST Action FP1304 PROFOUND as well as the Module E.8 of the IUFRO Task Force on 'Climate Change and Forest Health'. CPOR acknowledges funding from the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF, grant no. 01LS1201A1). MJS and KK acknowledge funding from the strategic research programme KBIV 'Sustainable spatial development of ecosystems, landscapes, seas and regions', funded by the Dutch Ministry of Economic Affairs. KK was additionally funded by the Knowledge Base project Resilient Forests (KB-29-009-003). RS acknowledges further support from the Austrian Science Fund FWF through START grant Y895-B25. HP acknowledges funding from the strategic research council of Academy of Finland for FORBIO project (no. 14970). The ISA-authors acknowledge funding from the CEF research Centre by project UID/AGR/00239/2013. NEZ acknowledges further support from Rafael O Wüest and from the Swiss Science Foundation SNF (grant #40FA40_158395). And from CERCA Programme / Generalitat de Catalunya.Recent studies projecting future climate change impacts on forests mainly consider either the effects of climate change on productivity or on disturbances. However, productivity and disturbances are intrinsically linked because 1) disturbances directly affect forest productivity (e.g. via a reduction in leaf area, growing stock or resource-use efficiency), and 2) disturbance susceptibility is often coupled to a certain development phase of the forest with productivity determining the time a forest is in this specific phase of susceptibility. The objective of this paper is to provide an overview of forest productivity changes in different forest regions in Europe under climate change, and partition these changes into effects induced by climate change alone and by climate change and disturbances. We present projections of climate change impacts on forest productivity from state-of-the-art forest models that dynamically simulate forest productivity and the effects of the main European disturbance agents (fire, storm, insects), driven by the same climate scenario in seven forest case studies along a large climatic gradient throughout Europe. Our study shows that, in most cases, including disturbances in the simulations exaggerate ongoing productivity declines or cancel out productivity gains in response to climate change. In fewer cases, disturbances also increase productivity or buffer climate-change induced productivity losses, e.g. because low severity fires can alleviate resource competition and increase fertilization. Even though our results cannot simply be extrapolated to other types of forests and disturbances, we argue that it is necessary to interpret climate change-induced productivity and disturbance changes jointly to capture the full range of climate change impacts on forests and to plan adaptation measures