The effect of extreme drought events on Pinus sylvestris (L.) xylem plasticity in pure and mixed forests and contrasting climatic conditions
- 1Faculty of Science and Technology, University of Bolzano-Bozen, Bolzano-Bozen, Italy
- 2CNR-IRET (Istituto di Ricerca sugli Ecosistemi Terrestri), Sesto Fiorentino, Italy
- 3Department of Silviculture, Warsaw University of Life Sciences, Warsaw, Poland
- 4Sustainable Forest Research Institute, University of Valladolid and INIA, Palencia, Spain
- 5Department of Forest and Wood Science, Stellenbosch University, Stellenbosch, South Africa
- 6Chair for Forest Growth and Yield, Technische Universität München, Freising, Germany
Forest ecosystems are known to be vulnerable to climate change. Climate extremes, such as drought
events, are expected to increase in duration and frequency in many areas across the globe. Unexpected
and prolonged drought events already caused forests dieback all over the world in the last decades,
leading to dramatic consequences, such as biodiversity loss, ecosystem services alteration and reduction
of carbon sequestration potential. Indeed, in Central Europe, monocultures consisting mostly of
secondary conifer forests, showed low resistance to such events, and their viability is further threatened
by the interaction with other biotic and abiotic factors. In this context, the need of a deeper understanding
of the physiological mechanisms behind the tree response to extreme drought eventsis fundamental. The
present study, developed under the network of the CARE4C Project (Carbon smart forestry under climate
change GA 778322), aims at investigating Pinus sylvestris xylem plasticity in response to extreme drought.
We selected P. sylvestris pure forests in contrasting climatic zones of Europe, i.e. continental (Poland) and
Mediterranean (Spain), to study P. sylvestris xylem plasticity to extreme drought events under different
climatic conditions. Contemporarily, this study aims at comparing the xylem plasticity of P. sylvestris in
mono-specific and mixed forests. In the latter, the admixture is with Quercus petraea and Quercus
pyrenaica, in Poland and Spain respectively. The responses of P. sylvestris wood anatomical traits, such as
tracheid lumen area, cell wall thickness and parenchyma ray area, will be quantified along the entire treering chronologies. Short-term and legacy effects of extreme drought on P. sylvestris wood anatomical
traits will be evaluated in order to provide insights about the vulnerability of this speciesin a future climate
scenario. Locally, the comparison between P. sylvestris wood anatomical traitsin mono-specific and mixed
forests will highlight whether the mixing of species with different ecological needs can affect P. sylvestris
performance, ameliorating the resilience of this species to extreme drought events.
How to cite: Giberti, G. S., Tonon, G., Giammarchi, F., Giovannelli, A., Bielak, K., Ariza, A. M., Alonso, C. O., Bravo, F., du Toit, B., Uhl, E., and Camilla, W.: The effect of extreme drought events on Pinus sylvestris (L.) xylem plasticity in pure and mixed forests and contrasting climatic conditions, EGU General Assembly 2020, Online, 4–8 May 2020, EGU2020-22307, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu2020-22307, 2020
