Is it really only due to the drought?

Since 2010, when Allen et al.'s highly-cited seminal paper was published in Forest Ecology and Management, a flood of studies have been published on the impact of drought on forest health and condition as well as tree physiology, greatly advancing our understanding of tree physiology and mortality processes. However, these findings have been interpreted by many as signs of a global forest decline due to the increasing frequency and severity of droughts linked to climate change. Upon closer examination of the literature, it appears that forest decline is limited to certain areas in certain regions and is not always induced by drought and associated or related disease and pest attacks, but also by other disturbances, such as windstorms or forest fires. All these disturbances  are often facilitated by past changes in land use, such as afforestation in not suited sites or deforestation due to conversion of land to agricultural crops. Social pressure on land and forest appears to play a key role in forest decline, in addition to the role played by drought, as in the case of the forest decline observed in Central Europe in the 1980s, probably triggered by the drought of 1976, although it is generally believed to have been caused by atmospheric pollution.