Lightning impacts on forests: direct and indirect (wildfire) tree mortality under present and future lightning activity

Lightning is an important disturbance process in forest ecosystems, affecting trees both directly—when a strike kills a tree—and indirectly by igniting wildfires. While lightning–fire interactions are widely studied, direct lightning-induced tree mortality is not represented in global Earth System Models, limiting our ability to assess the full impact of lightning on forests under a changing climate.

To address this gap, we implement lightning-induced tree mortality in the dynamic global vegetation model LPJ-GUESS, using field-derived relationships from a Panamanian forest where lightning mortality has been systematically quantified. The model successfully reproduces observed lightning-induced tree mortality at several sites but simulates lower mortality than estimated at other locations. Running the model globally, we quantify the number of trees and associated biomass directly lost to lightning and compare these losses to biomass losses from lightning-ignited wildfires, highlighting key uncertainties in both pathways.

To place these present-day impacts in a future context, we synthesize existing lightning parameterizations used in global chemistry-climate models and assess their skill and projected changes in lightning activity. Applying projections from several well-performing parameterizations, we explore how future changes in lightning may alter both direct and indirect lightning-induced tree mortality. Together, our results demonstrate that lightning is a multifaceted and potentially growing driver of forest change, and that accurately representing lightning mortality is essential for robust projections of future forest dynamics.