Recent research led by Daijun Liu, published in Nature Communications, has shed light on how forests adapt to the increasing threat of water stress caused by climate change. The study combined eight water-stress-related functional traits with forest inventory data from Europe and the USA (12,452 forest communities), investigated the community-level trait coordination and the biogeographic patterns of trait associations for woody plants, and analysed the relationships between the trait associations and climate factors.
The results show that tree functional strategies for dealing with water vary across forest communities. The spatial patterns of functional strategies in forest communities are better explained by temperature than aridity, suggesting a temperature-driven adaptation. These findings are vital for improving vegetation models—tools used to forecast the future of forests under climate change. Please see the details here.
Liu, D., Esquivel-Muelbert, A., Acil, N., Astigarraga, J., Cienciala, E., Fridman, J., … &
Pugh, T. A. (2024). Mapping multi-dimensional variability in water stress strategies across temperate forests. Nature Communications, 15(1), 8909.
