1. Temperature and photoperiod interactions influence the cessation of wood growth in three temperate and boreal conifersJianhong Lin, Cyrille Rathgeber, Patrick Fonti, Sergio Rossi, Henri E. Cuny, Edurne Martinez Del Castillo, Katarina Čufar, Jesús J. Camarero, Alessio Giovannelli, Harri Mäkinen, Peter Prislan, Walter Oberhuber, Hanuš Vavrčík, Jianguo Huang, Andreas Gruber, Vladimir Gryc, Václav Treml, Martin De Luis, Jožica Gričar, Nicolas Delpierre, 2026, original scientific article Abstract: Cambium phenology is a crucial process in wood production and carbon sequestration of forest ecosystems. Although cambium phenology has been widely studied, research specifically focusing on the cessation of wood formation remains limited. To better understand the influence of environmental and intrinsic factors on the cessation of wood formation, we built and compared three ecophysiological models (temperature sum model, photoperiod-influenced temperature sum model and soil moisture- and photoperiod-influenced temperature sum model) in their ability to predict the date of cessation of xylem cell enlargement (cE) in three major Northern Hemisphere conifer species (Black spruce, Norway spruce and Scots pine). We developed these models based on xylogenesis data collected for 130 site‐years across Europe and Canada. Our results demonstrate that the photoperiod-influenced temperature sum model is well-supported by data across all conifer species, with a RMSE of 9.2 days, suggesting that both temperature and photoperiod are critical drivers of wood growth cessation. However, incorporating soil moisture effects does not improve model performance. Our model effectively captures the inter-site variability in cE across a wide environmental gradient, with a fair model efficiency (ME = 0.51 ± 0.22), but performed less well for annual anomalies (ME = 0.10 ± 0.09). Additionally, we found that the total ring cell number also affected prediction accuracy. Using this model, we reconstructed historical trends in cE over the past six decades and found a trend to delayed cessation dates. This delay varied geographically, with slower shifts at higher latitudes and elevations, likely due to constrained cambial responses and conservative growth strategies in colder regions. Our model framework offers a simple yet accurate approach for predicting wood growth cessation at large spatial scales, providing a basis for integrating cambium phenology into land surface models and forest productivity assessments.
Keywords: cambium phenology, ecophysiological models, xylem formation, climate change, global warming, northern hemisphere forests
Published in DiRROS: 12.02.2026; Views: 494; Downloads: 195
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2. Partial asynchrony of coniferous forest carbon sources and sinks at the intra-annual time scaleRoberto Silvestro, Maurizio Mencuccini, Franco Biondi, Jesus Julio Camarero, Alberto Arzac, Filipe Campelo, Katarina Čufar, Henri E. Cuny, Martin De Luis, Annie Deslauriers, Jožica Gričar, Peter Prislan, 2024, original scientific article Abstract: As major terrestrial carbon sinks, forests play an important role in mitigating climate change. The relationship between the seasonal uptake of carbon and its allocation to woody biomass remains poorly understood, leaving a significant gap in our capacity to predict carbon sequestration by forests. Here, we compare the intra-annual dynamics of carbon fluxes and wood formation across the Northern hemisphere, from carbon assimilation and the formation of non-structural carbon compounds to their incorporation in woody tissues. We show temporally coupled seasonal peaks of carbon assimilation (GPP) and wood cell differentiation, while the two processes are substantially decoupled during off-peak periods. Peaks of cambial activity occur substantially earlier compared to GPP, suggesting the buffer role of non-structural carbohydrates between the processes of carbon assimilation and allocation to wood. Our findings suggest that high-resolution seasonal data of ecosystem carbon fluxes, wood formation and the associated physiological processes may reduce uncertainties in carbon source-sink relationships at different spatial scales, from stand to ecosystem levels.
Keywords: carbon sinks, forests, conifers, intra-annual resolution
Published in DiRROS: 10.02.2025; Views: 772; Downloads: 578
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3. Jet stream position explains regional anomalies in European beech forest productivity and tree growthIsabel Dorado Liñán, Blanca Ayarzagüena, Flurin Babst, Guobao Xu, Luis Gil, Giovanna Battipaglia, Allan Buras, Vojtěch Čada, Jesús J. Camarero, Liam Cavin, Tom Levanič, Peter Prislan, 2022, original scientific article Abstract: The mechanistic pathways connecting ocean-atmosphere variability and terrestrial productivity are well-established theoretically, but remain challenging to quantify empirically. Such quantification will greatly improve the assessment and prediction of changes in terrestrial carbon sequestration in response to dynamically induced climatic extremes. The jet stream latitude (JSL) over the North Atlantic-European domain provides a synthetic and robust physical framework that integrates climate variability not accounted for by atmospheric circulation patterns alone. Surface climate impacts of north-south summer JSL displacements are not uniform across Europe, but rather create a northwestern-southeastern dipole in forest productivity and radial-growth anomalies. Summer JSL variability over the eastern North Atlantic-European domain (5-40E) exerts the strongest impact on European beech, inducing anomalies of up to 30% in modelled gross primary productivity and 50% in radial tree growth. The net effects of JSL movements on terrestrial carbon fluxes depend on forest density, carbon stocks, and productivity imbalances across biogeographic regions.
Keywords: atmospheric dynamics, climate-change ecology, climate-change impacts, environmental impact
Published in DiRROS: 20.04.2022; Views: 2013; Downloads: 1860
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4. Low growth resilience to drought is related to future mortality risk in treesLucía De Soto, Maxime Cailleret, Frank Sterck, Steven Jansen, Koen Kramer, Elisabeth M.R. Robert, Tuomas Aakala, Mariano M. Amoroso, Christof Bigler, Jesus Julio Camarero, Katarina Čufar, Tom Levanič, 2020, original scientific article Abstract: Severe droughts have the potential to reduce forest productivity and trigger tree mortality. Most trees face several drought events during their life and therefore resilience to dry conditions might be crucial to long-term survival. We assess how growth resilience to severe droughts, including its components resistance and recovery, is related to the ability to survive future droughts by using a tree-ring database of surviving and now-dead trees from 118 sites (22 species, >3,500 trees). We find that, across the variety of regions and species sampled, trees that died during water shortages were less resilient to previous non-lethal droughts, relative to coexisting surviving trees of the same species. In angiosperms, drought-related mortality risk is associated with lower resistance (low capacity to reduce impact of the initial drought), while it is related to reduced recovery (low capacity to attain pre-drought growth rates) in gymnosperms. The different resilience strategies in these two taxonomic groups open new avenues to improve our understanding and prediction of drought-induced mortality. Resilience to drought is crucial for tree survival under climate change. Here, DeSoto et al. show that trees that died during drought were less resilient to previous dry events compared to surviving conspecifics, but the resilience strategies differ between angiosperms and gymnosperms.
Keywords: trees, mortality, gymnosperms, angiosperms, drought, resilience, resistance, recovery
Published in DiRROS: 20.02.2020; Views: 3033; Downloads: 1674
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