Placing unprecedented recent fir growth in a European-wide and Holocene-long context

Büntgen, Ulf; Tegel, Willy; Kaplan, Jed O.; Schaub, Michael; Hagedorn, Frank; Bürgi, Matthias; Brázdil, Rudolf; Helle, Gerhard; Carrer, Marco; Heussner, Karl-Uwe; Hofmann, Jutta; Kontic, Raymond; Kyncl, Tomás; Kyncl, Josef; Julio Camarero, J.; Tinner, Willy; Esper, Jan; Liebhold, Andrew (2014). Placing unprecedented recent fir growth in a European-wide and Holocene-long context. Frontiers in ecology and the environment, 12(2), pp. 100-106. Ecological Society of America 10.1890/130089

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Forest decline played a pivotal role in motivating Europe's political focus on sustainability around 35 years ago. Silver fir (Abies alba) exhibited a particularly severe dieback in the mid-1970s, but disentangling biotic from abiotic drivers remained challenging because both spatial and temporal data were lacking. Here, we analyze 14 136 samples from living trees and historical timbers, together with 356 pollen records, to evaluate recent fir growth from a continent-wide and Holocene-long perspective. Land use and climate change influenced forest growth over the past millennium, whereas anthropogenic emissions of acidic sulfates and nitrates became important after about 1850. Pollution control since the 1980s, together with a warmer but not drier climate, has facilitated an unprecedented surge in productivity across Central European fir stands. Restricted fir distribution prior to the Mesolithic and again in the Modern Era, separated by a peak in abundance during the Bronze Age, is indicative of the long-term interplay of changing temperatures, shifts in the hydrological cycle, and human impacts that have shaped forest structure and productivity.

Item Type:

Journal Article (Original Article)

Division/Institute:

10 Strategic Research Centers > Oeschger Centre for Climate Change Research (OCCR)
08 Faculty of Science > Other Institutions > Teaching Staff, Faculty of Science
08 Faculty of Science > Department of Biology > Institute of Plant Sciences (IPS) > Palaeoecology
08 Faculty of Science > Department of Biology > Institute of Plant Sciences (IPS)
09 Interdisciplinary Units > Interdisciplinary Centre for General Ecology (IKAÖ)
08 Faculty of Science > Department of Biology > Institute of Ecology and Evolution (IEE) > Conservation Biology

UniBE Contributor:

Büntgen, Ulf, Kaplan, Jed, Schaub, Michael, Bürgi, Matthias, Tinner, Willy, Esper, Jan

Subjects:

900 History > 910 Geography & travel
500 Science > 580 Plants (Botany)
300 Social sciences, sociology & anthropology > 330 Economics

ISSN:

1540-9295

Publisher:

Ecological Society of America

Language:

English

Submitter:

Peter Alfred von Ballmoos-Haas

Date Deposited:

06 Jun 2014 09:53

Last Modified:

05 Dec 2022 14:34

Publisher DOI:

10.1890/130089

URI:

https://boris.unibe.ch/id/eprint/51829

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