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Over the past four decades, annual area burned has increased significantly in California and across the western USA. This trend reflects a confluence of intersecting factors that affect wildfire regimes. It is correlated with increasing temperatures and atmospheric vapour pressure deficit. Anthropogenic climate change is the driver behind much of this change, in addition to influencing other climate-related factors, such as compression of the winter wet season. These climatic trends and associated increases in fire activity are projected to continue into the future. Additionally, factors related to the suppression of the Indigenous use of fire, aggressive fire suppression and, in some cases, changes in logging practices...
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Tree die-off, driven by extreme drought and exacerbated by a warming climate, is occurring rapidly across every wooded continent—threatening carbon sinks and other ecosystem services provided by forests and woodlands. Forecasting the spatial patterns of tree die-off in response to drought is a priority for the management and conservation of forested ecosystems under projected future hotter and drier climates. Several thresholds derived from drought-metrics have been proposed to predict mortality of Pinus edulis, a model tree species in many studies of drought-induced tree die-off. To improve future capacity to forecast tree mortality, we used a severe drought as a natural experiment. We compared the ability of existing...
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Tree loss is increasing rapidly due to drought- and heat-related mortality and intensifying fire activity. Consequently, the fate of many forests depends on the ability of juvenile trees to withstand heightened climate and disturbance anomalies. Extreme climatic events, such as droughts and heatwaves, are increasing in frequency and severity, and trees in mountainous regions must contend with these landscape-level climate episodes. Recent research focuses on how mortality of individual tree species may be driven by drought and heatwaves, but how juvenile mortality under these conditions would vary among species spanning an elevational gradient—given concurrent variation in climate, ecohydrology, and physiology–remains...
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Drought-associated woody-plant mortality has been increasing in most regions with multi-decadal records and is projected to increase in the future, impacting terrestrial climate forcing, biodiversity and resource availability. The mechanisms underlying such mortality, however, are debated, owing to complex interactions between the drivers and the processes. In this Review, we synthesize knowledge of drought-related tree mortality under a warming and drying atmosphere with rising atmospheric CO2. Drought-associated mortality results from water and carbon depletion and declines in their fluxes relative to demand by living tissues. These pools and fluxes are interdependent and underlay plant defences against biotic...
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Ecosystems respond to disturbances (such as wildfire) and changing climate in a variety of ways, including persistence, recovery, and reorganization into new combinations. Some species respond by migrating across the landscape over time, which allows them to keep up with changing climate. Many forests recover after wildfire by regenerating from seeds, and public land managers often assist these processes to help ecosystems recover. However, the success of all of these strategies depends on young plants (seedlings and saplings) surviving, often when exposed to harsh conditions following fires, including prolonged droughts, heat waves, and rising temperatures. In this project, researchers will study how well young...
Categories: Project;
Types: Map Service,
OGC WFS Layer,
OGC WMS Layer,
OGC WMS Service;
Tags: 2023,
CASC,
Drought,
Drought,
Drought, Fire and Extreme Weather, All tags...
Drought, Fire and Extreme Weather,
Fire,
Fire,
Forests,
Forests,
Landscapes,
Landscapes,
Plants,
Plants,
Projects by Region,
Southwest,
Southwest CASC,
Wildlife and Plants,
Wildlife and Plants, Fewer tags
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