Module 4 INTEGRATON

Adressed key deliverable: To integrate findings and knowledge to new concepts of assessment and adaptation to extreme events. A central point will be to link climate change related variations in (physical) extreme events, as seen in past and recent climate data to observed extreme impacts in ecology mirrored by novel stress indicators. The comparison of different features (tree ring, phenology, seed quality, germination) and of different tree species will allow assessment of resilience and thus vulnerability. A most interesting point will be the integration of findings into concepts of modeling tree species distributions since very little first evidence suggests that the margins of ranges are predominantly triggered by extreme events.

Phenological adaptation to changes in climatic means vs. climatic variability

Reyer C, Leuzinger S, Rammig A, Wolf, A, Bartholomeus RP, Bonfante A, De Lorenzi F, Dury M, Gloning P, Abou Jadoudé R, Klein T, Kuster TM, Martins M, Niedreist G, Riccardi M, Wohlfahrt G, De Angelis P, De Dato G, Francois L, Menzel A, Pereira M (2013) A plant’s perspective of extremes: Terrestrial plant responses to changing climatic variability. Global Change Biology 19(1), 75-89

The multi-author paper reviews observational, experimental, and model results on how plants respond to extreme climatic conditions, induced by changing climatic variability. The major aim is to distinguish between impacts of changing mean conditions vs. changing variability and to identify plant processes that are more vulnerable to the latter ones and to depict/evaluate available study designs to quantify those responses.

Cooperation with MARGINS and COST FP1202

E3 is cooperating with other current international initiatives on marginal/peripheral populations of forest tree species in Europe. E3 will study marginal populations at the dry-warm (xeric) limit of their respective distributions, characterized in terms of genetics, dendroecology, stand and site characteristics, and analyze if and to what extent those margins of ranges are triggered by extreme events.