1,2,3,7,- 1Hawkesbury Institute for the Environment, Western Sydney University, Sydney, New South Wales, Australia
- 2Research Center for Global Change and Ecological Forecasting, School of Ecological and Environmental Sciences, East China Normal University, Shanghai, China
- 3School of Agriculture, Food, and Ecosystem Sciences, The University of Melbourne, Burnley Campus, Victoria, Australia
- 4Research Institute for the Environment and Livelihoods, Charles Darwin University, Darwin, NT, Australia
- 5CSIRO Environment, Canberra, Australian Capital Territory, Australia
- 6Department of Environment and Genetics, School of Agriculture, Biomedicine and Environment, La Trobe University, Melbourne, Victoria, Australia
- 7Centre for Tropical, Environmental, and Sustainability Sciences, James Cook University, Cairns, Queensland, Australia
- 8Sustainable Timber Tasmania, Tasmania, Australia
- 9Forestry Corporation of New South Wales, New South Wales, Australia
- 10Biodiversity and Conservation Science, Department of Biodiversity, Conservation and Attractions, Western Australia.
- 11Queensland Herbarium and Biodiversity Science, Department of Environment, Tourism, Science and Innovation, Brisbane, Queensland, Australia
- 12School of Natural Sciences, University of Tasmania, Tasmania, Australia
- 13School of Environmental and Conservation Sciences, Murdoch University, Murdoch, Western Australia, Australia.
Widespread climate-driven increases in background tree mortality rates have the potential to reduce the carbon storage of terrestrial ecosystems, challenging their effectiveness as natural buffers against atmospheric CO2 enrichment with major consequences for the global carbon budget. However, the global extent of trends in tree mortality and their drivers remains poorly quantified. The Australian continent experiences one of the most variable climates on Earth and is host to a diverse range of forest biomes that have evolved high resistance to disturbance, providing a valuable test case for the pervasiveness of tree mortality trends. Here, we compiled an 83-year tree dynamics database (1941-2023) from > 2,700 forest plots across Australia covering tropical savanna and rainforest, and warm and cool temperate forests, to explore spatiotemporal patterns of tree mortality and the associated drivers. Over the past eight decades, we found a consistent trend of increasing tree mortality across the four forest biomes. This temporal trend persisted after accounting for stand structure and was exacerbated in forests with low moisture index or a high competition index. Species with traits associated with high growth rate – low wood density, high specific leaf area, and short maximum height – exhibited higher average mortality, but the rate of mortality increase was comparable across different functional groups. Increasing mortality was not associated with increasing growth, given that stand basal area increments either declined or remained unchanged over time, but it was associated with increasing temperature over time. Our findings suggest that ongoing climate change has driven pervasive shifts in forest dynamics beyond natural recovery in a range of forest biomes with high resilience to disturbance, threatening the enduring capacity of forests to sequester carbon under current and future climate scenarios.
How to cite: Lu, R., Williams, L., Trouvé, R., Murphy, B., Baker, P., Carle, H., Forrester, D., Green, P., Liddell, M., Marunda, C., Mannes, D., Mazanec, R., Ngugi, M., Neldner, V., Prior, L., Ruthrof, K., Suitor, S., Xia, J., and Medlyn, B.: Pervasive increase in tree mortality across the Australian continent, EGU General Assembly 2026, Vienna, Austria, 3–8 May 2026, EGU26-4330, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu26-4330, 2026.
