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Abstract Weather and climate extremes are transforming ecosystems in ways that threaten society through the disruption of nature’s contributions to people (NCP) from food and water security to disaster mitigation and mental well-being. While scientists and policy makers increasingly recognize the need to account for nature-related losses from climate-driven weather extremes, major research gaps remain, particularly in how climate-altered disturbance regimes will impact NCP and associated human well-being. Addressing this gap is critical for climate mitigation and adaptation planning, because the loss of NCP amplifies social-ecological vulnerability and exacerbates climate risks. However, this cross-systems dynamic remains underrepresented in most climate risk models. Climate risk modeling offers a probabilistic view of evolving hazard regimes under climate change, while ecological research provides mechanistic insight into ecosystem responses to disturbance. We argue that bridging these fields is essential to increasing societal resilience to climate change and propose an interdisciplinary research agenda to integrate social-ecological dynamics with a climate risk perspective. Advancing this agenda is critical to project, anticipate, and plan for ecosystem-related impacts of weather and climate extremes on society.
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This content will become publicly available on August 1, 2027
Mechanisms and scales in modeling forest responses to changing disturbance regimes
Summary Natural disturbances are major drivers of large‐scale forest dynamics. However, the representation of forest disturbances remains oversimplified and poorly constrained in terrestrial biosphere models, compromising predictive performance under rapidly changing disturbance regimes. In this review, we first summarize the general mechanisms underlying vegetation responses to major disturbance agents across spatio‐temporal scales, including occurrence regimes, immediate structural impacts, post‐disturbance community reorganization, and long‐term ecosystem feedbacks. Predictable patterns of the processes provide the ecological foundation of disturbance modeling. Subsequently, we synthesize progress and challenges toward more mechanistic disturbance modeling, organized by three generic modules: occurrence, impact, and post‐disturbance dynamics. Future model developments should implement dynamic disturbance regimes, model lethal and nonlethal structural damage with trait‐based hazard functions, and represent key ecological processes determining post‐disturbance ecosystem dynamics – including different regeneration strategies, trait plasticity in response to rapid microenvironmental changes, and disturbance legacy effects. Finally, we discuss observational constraints on mechanistic disturbance models. Model parameterization and development can benefit from advancing disturbance detection and attribution via multi‐modal and multi‐platform remote sensing, ground measurements, and disturbance manipulation experiments. Altogether, mechanistic, scalable, and observation‐constrained simulation of disturbance is essential for reducing uncertainties in forecasting global change impacts on ecosystems and carbon cycle feedbacks.
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- PAR ID:
- 10700509
- Publisher / Repository:
- New Phytologist
- Date Published:
- Journal Name:
- New Phytologist
- Volume:
- 251
- Issue:
- 4
- ISSN:
- 0028-646X
- Page Range / eLocation ID:
- 1660 to 1676
- Format(s):
- Medium: X
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
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