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Temperature response surfaces for mortality risk of tree species with future drought

Journal Article · · Environmental Research Letters
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Widespread, high levels of tree mortality, termed forest die-off, associated with drought and rising temperatures, are disrupting forests worldwide. Drought will likely become more frequent with climate change, but even without more frequent drought, higher temperatures can exacerbate tree water stress. The temperature sensitivity of drought-induced mortality of tree species has been evaluated experimentally for only single-step changes in temperature (ambient compared to ambient + increase) rather than as a response surface (multiple levels of temperature increase), which constrains our ability to relate changes in the driver with the biological response. Here we show that time-to-mortality during drought for seedlings of two western United States tree species, Pinus edulis (Engelm.) and Pinus ponderosa (Douglas ex C. Lawson), declined in continuous proportion with increasing temperature spanning a 7.7 °C increase. Although P. edulis outlived P. ponderosa at all temperatures, both species had similar relative declines in time-to-mortality as temperature increased (5.2% per °C for P. edulis; 5.8% per °C for P. ponderosa). When combined with the non-linear frequency distribution of drought duration—many more short droughts than long droughts—these findings point to a progressive increase in mortality events with global change due to warming alone and independent of additional changes in future drought frequency distributions. As such, dire future forest recruitment patterns are projected assuming the calculated 7-9 seedling mortality events per species by 2100 under business-as-usual warming occurs, congruent with additional vulnerability predicted for adult trees from stressors like pathogens and pests. Our progressive projection for increased mortality events was driven primarily by the non-linear shape of the drought duration frequency distribution, a common climate feature of drought-affected regions. These results illustrate profound benefits for reducing emissions of carbon to the atmosphere from anthropogenic sources and slowing warming as rapidly as possible to maximize forest persistence.
Research Organization:
Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL), Richland, WA (US)
Sponsoring Organization:
USDOE
DOE Contract Number:
AC05-76RL01830
OSTI ID:
1422306
Report Number(s):
PNNL-SA-130379
Journal Information:
Environmental Research Letters, Journal Name: Environmental Research Letters Journal Issue: 11 Vol. 12; ISSN 1748-9326
Publisher:
IOP Publishing
Country of Publication:
United States
Language:
English

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Cited By (8)

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Stem radial growth and water storage responses to heat and drought vary between conifers with differing hydraulic strategies: Semiarid conifers responses to drought and heat journal June 2018
A Dirty Dozen Ways to Die: Metrics and Modifiers of Mortality Driven by Drought and Warming for a Tree Species journal October 2018
Continental-scale consequences of tree die-offs in North America: identifying where forest loss matters most journal May 2018
Fire and tree death: understanding and improving modeling of fire-induced tree mortality journal November 2018

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Related Subjects

Pinus edulis
Pinus ponderosa
climate change ecology
drought
temperature
tree die-off
tree mortality