Historic land use modifies impacts of climate and isolation in rear edge European beech (Fagus sylvatica L.) populations

Rhoades, Jazz; Vilà‐Cabrera, Albert; Ruiz‐Benito, Paloma; Bullock, James M. ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-0529-4020; Jump, Alistair S.; Chapman, Daniel. 2024 Historic land use modifies impacts of climate and isolation in rear edge European beech (Fagus sylvatica L.) populations. Global Change Biology, 30 (11), e17563. 14, pp. https://doi.org/10.1111/gcb.17563

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Abstract/Summary

Legacies of human land use have the potential to impact demographic responses to climate. However, few studies have investigated the interactive effects of land use legacies and climate change on tree demography. The demographic performance of rear edge populations in particular is an important determinant of a species' long-term persistence. In this study, we investigated whether human land use legacies affect demographic responses to climate and population isolation in rear edge European beech populations (Fagus sylvatica L.) at the temperate-Mediterranean transition zone in the NE Iberian Peninsula. We utilised data from the Spanish Forest Inventory and generalised linear mixed models to compare the potential interactions across four different demographic rates (tree growth, survival probability, new adult recruitment and sapling recruitment). We found that the demographic rates were affected by the combination of land use legacies, climate and population isolation in different ways, which could potentially lead to complex shifts in future population dynamics under climate change. We identified that intense historic management either magnified negative relationships between tree demography and climate or population isolation, or reduced demographic performance in favourable climates to levels observed in unfavourable climates. Through either form of interaction, we found that intense historic forest management had a negative impact on tree demography, which has the potential to compromise future carbon stocks and long-term population viability. Overall, we show that disentangling human and environmental factors can enable us to better understand heterogeneous demographic performance across the rear edge of species distributions.

Item Type:	Publication - Article
Digital Object Identifier (DOI):	https://doi.org/10.1111/gcb.17563
UKCEH and CEH Sections/Science Areas:	Biodiversity (Science Area 2017-)
ISSN:	1354-1013
Additional Information. Not used in RCUK Gateway to Research.:	Open Access paper - full text available via Official URL link.
Additional Keywords:	biogeography, climate change, demography, forest ecology, land use, marginality, National Forest Inventory, range shifts
NORA Subject Terms:	Ecology and Environment Meteorology and Climatology
Related URLs:	Other Other Dataset Dataset Dataset
Date made live:	14 Nov 2024 10:27 +0 (UTC)
URI:	https://nora.nerc.ac.uk/id/eprint/538379

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