Content area
Ecosystem resilience represents the capacity to withstand and recover from perturbations, an important property for ecosystem function in an era of escalating disturbances. Whilst studies relate large-scale forest resilience to abiotic factors, knowledge gaps remain regarding the link to aspects of functional diversity, such as forest structural diversity (FSD), a factor controllable through management. Here we use spaceborne lidar-derived FSD to quantify its role in determining resilience in Southern and Central European forests. A random forest isolates the FSD-resilience interplay by disentangling confounding environmental factors. Results show a positive FSD-resilience relationship in 80% of forests. Canopy complexity is a better predictor of resilience than spatial variability in canopy height. This emergent relationship is explored as an adaptation measure to preserve resilience under warming scenarios, with the decline associated with 1 ∘C of warming compensated by a 10% increase in canopy complexity. The findings suggest that management promoting canopy complexity potentially compensates warming-driven declines in resilience.
Forest structural diversity is positively associated with forest resilience in about 80% of Southern and Central European forests, implying that increasing canopy complexity may offset warming-driven declines in resilience, based on an analysis of remote sensing data and random forest modelling.
Details
; Elia, Agata 2
; Oton, Gonzalo 3
; Piccardo, Matteo 4 ; Ceccherini, Guido 5 ; Forzieri, Giovanni 6 ; Migliavacca, Mirco 3
; Cescatti, Alessandro 3
; Girardello, Marco 7 1 European Dynamics, Ispra, Italy; Consultant with the European Commission, Joint Research Center (JRC), Ispra, Italy (ROR: https://ror.org/02qezmz13) (GRID: grid.434554.7) (ISNI: 0000 0004 1758 4137)
2 European Space Agency, ESRIN, Frascati, Italy (ROR: https://ror.org/05vt9rv16) (GRID: grid.507236.5) (ISNI: 0000 0001 1013 9346)
3 European Commission, Joint Research Centre (JRC), Ispra, Italy (ROR: https://ror.org/02qezmz13) (GRID: grid.434554.7) (ISNI: 0000 0004 1758 4137)
4 Consultant with the European Commission, Joint Research Center (JRC), Ispra, Italy (ROR: https://ror.org/02qezmz13) (GRID: grid.434554.7) (ISNI: 0000 0004 1758 4137); Matteo Piccardo, Arona, Italy; Engineering Ingegneria Informatica S.p.A. Consultant, Rome, Italy (ROR: https://ror.org/045s9b323) (GRID: grid.4347.4) (ISNI: 0000000119394239)
5 Consultant with the European Commission, Joint Research Center (JRC), Ispra, Italy (ROR: https://ror.org/02qezmz13) (GRID: grid.434554.7) (ISNI: 0000 0004 1758 4137); Engineering Ingegneria Informatica S.p.A. Consultant, Rome, Italy (ROR: https://ror.org/045s9b323) (GRID: grid.4347.4) (ISNI: 0000000119394239); Department of Civil, Environmental and Architectural Engineering ICEA, University of Padua, Padua, Italy (ROR: https://ror.org/00240q980) (GRID: grid.5608.b) (ISNI: 0000 0004 1757 3470)
6 Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, University of Florence, Florence, Italy (ROR: https://ror.org/04jr1s763) (GRID: grid.8404.8) (ISNI: 0000 0004 1757 2304)
7 European Commission, Joint Research Centre (JRC), Ispra, Italy (ROR: https://ror.org/02qezmz13) (GRID: grid.434554.7) (ISNI: 0000 0004 1758 4137); Department of Geography, Trinity College Dublin, The University of Dublin, Dublin, Ireland (ROR: https://ror.org/02tyrky19) (GRID: grid.8217.c) (ISNI: 0000 0004 1936 9705)