Baruffol, Martin

Both, Sabine

Bruelheide, Helge

Fang, Teng

Gutknecht, Jessica

Heklau, Heike

Kahl, Anja

Kahl, Tiemo

Kröber, Wenzel

Liu, Xiaojuan

Mi, Xiangcheng

Michalski, Stefan

Nadrowski, Karin

Niklaus, Pascal

Pietsch, Katherina

Purschke, Oliver

Schmid, Bernhard

von Oheimb, Goddert

Welk, Erik

Wirth, Christian

PLoS ONE

English

PubMed

Future climates are likely to include extreme events, which in turn have great impacts on ecological systems. In this study, we investigated possible effects that could mitigate stem breakage caused by a rare and extreme ice storm in a Chinese subtropical forest across a gradient of forest diversity. We used Bayesian modeling to correct stem breakage for tree size and variance components analysis to quantify the influence of taxon, leaf and wood functional traits, and stand level properties on the probability of stem breakage. We show that the taxon explained four times more variance in individual stem breakage than did stand level properties; trees with higher specific leaf area (SLA) were less susceptible to breakage. However, a large part of the variation at the taxon scale remained unexplained, implying that unmeasured or undefined traits could be used to predict damage caused by ice storms. When aggregated at the plot level, functional diversity and wood density increased after the ice storm. We suggest that for the adaption of forest management to climate change, much can still be learned from looking at functional traits at the taxon level

Karin Nadrowski

Katherina Pietsch

Martin Baruffol

Sabine Both

Jessica Gutknecht

Helge Bruelheide

Heike Heklau

Anja Kahl

Tiemo Kahl

Pascal Niklaus

Wenzel Kröber

Xiaojuan Liu

Xiangcheng Mi

Stefan Michalski

Goddert von Oheimb

Oliver Purschke

Bernhard Schmid

Teng Fang

Erik Welk

Christian Wirth

Directory of Open Access Journals

Tree species traits but not diversity mitigate stem breakage in a subtropical forest following a rare and extreme ice storm.

<div><p>Future climates are likely to include extreme events, which in turn have great impacts on ecological systems. In this study, we investigated possible effects that could mitigate stem breakage caused by a rare and extreme ice storm in a Chinese subtropical forest across a gradient of forest diversity. We used Bayesian modeling to correct stem breakage for tree size and variance components analysis to quantify the influence of taxon, leaf and wood functional traits, and stand level properties on the probability of stem breakage. We show that the taxon explained four times more variance in individual stem breakage than did stand level properties; trees with higher specific leaf area (SLA) were less susceptible to breakage. However, a large part of the variation at the taxon scale remained unexplained, implying that unmeasured or undefined traits could be used to predict damage caused by ice storms. When aggregated at the plot level, functional diversity and wood density increased after the ice storm. We suggest that for the adaption of forest management to climate change, much can still be learned from looking at functional traits at the taxon level.</p></div

Karin Nadrowski (282403)

Katherina Pietsch (570335)

Martin Baruffol (282405)

Sabine Both (347098)

Jessica Gutknecht (140885)

Helge Bruelheide (137145)

Heike Heklau (570336)

Anja Kahl (570337)

Tiemo Kahl (520648)

Pascal Niklaus (570338)

Wenzel Kröber (169165)

Xiaojuan Liu (157559)

Xiangcheng Mi (123974)

Stefan Michalski (489998)

Goddert von Oheimb (570339)

Oliver Purschke (570340)

Bernhard Schmid (65171)

Teng Fang (570341)

Erik Welk (169172)

Christian Wirth (169175)

The Francis Crick Institute

Tree Species Traits but Not Diversity Mitigate Stem Breakage in a Subtropical Forest following a Rare and Extreme Ice Storm

Gutknecht, Jessica L. M.

Niklaus, Pascal A.

Oheimb, Goddert von

FreiDok plus

ZORA

Tree species traits but not diversity mitigate stem breakage in a subtropical forest following a rare and extreme ice storm

Tree species traits but not diversity mitigate stem breakage in a subtropical forest following a rare and extreme ice storm

Abstract

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Directory of Open Access Journals

The Francis Crick Institute

FreiDok plus

ZORA

Crossref

Aberdeen University Research

of Botany,Chinese Academy Of Sciences