Forest Dieback

This press release was kindly provided by the Universty of Utah

Forests are engaged in a delicate, deadly dance with climate change, sucking carbon dioxide out of the air with billions of leafy straws and hosting abundant biodiversity, as long as climate change, with its droughts, wildfires and ecosystem shifts, doesn’t kill them first. more

International researchers found a pattern of extreme climate conditions leading to forest dieback. To do this, the team had collected worldwide records of climate-related tree and forest dieback events over the past nearly five decades. This allowed the researchers to derive a combination of extreme climate conditions in which trees die: drought coupled with heat, in precisely defined extreme conditions. more

International forest experts analyzed striking events of tree and forest deaths that occurred on Earth in recent decades due to climate change. Surprisingly, forests that were not considered threatened according to scientific knowledge were increasingly affected. more

In recent years, European forests have suffered greatly from extreme climate conditions and their consequences. Well over half of Europe's forests are potentially at risk from windthrow, forest fire, insect infestation or a combination of these. This is the result of a study by an international team of scientists with the participation of Dr. Henrik Hartmann from the Max Planck Institute for Biogeochemistry. more