Search for: All records

Purpose of Review Outbreaks of tree-killing bark beetles have reached unprecedented levels in conifer forests in the northern hemisphere and are expected to further intensify due to climate change. In parts of Europe, bark beetle outbreaks and efforts to manage them have even triggered social unrests and political instability. These events have increasingly challenged traditional responses to outbreaks, and highlight the need for a more comprehensive management framework. Recent Findings Several synthesis papers on different aspects of bark beetle ecology and management exist. However, our understanding of outbreak drivers and impacts, principles of ecosystem management, governance, and the role of climate change in the dynamics of ecological and social systems has rapidly advanced in recent years. These advances are suggesting a reconsideration of previous management strategies. Summary We synthesize the state of knowledge on drivers and impacts of bark beetle outbreaks in Europe and propose a comprehensive context-dependent framework for their management. We illustrate our ideas for two contrasting societal objectives that represent the end-members of a continuum of forest management goals: wood and biomass production and the conservation of biodiversity and natural processes. For production forests, we propose a management approach addressing economic, social, ecological, infrastructural, and legislative aspects of bark beetle disturbances. In conservation forests, where non-intervention is the default option, we elaborate under which circumstances an active intervention is necessary, and whether such an intervention is in conflict with the objective to conserve biodiversity. Our approach revises the current management response to bark beetles in Europe and promotes an interdisciplinary social-ecological approach to dealing with disturbances. 

Abstract The emergence of alternative stable states in forest systems has significant implications for the functioning and structure of the terrestrial biosphere, yet empirical evidence remains scarce. Here, we combine global forest biodiversity observations and simulations to test for alternative stable states in the presence of evergreen and deciduous forest types. We reveal a bimodal distribution of forest leaf types across temperate regions of the Northern Hemisphere that cannot be explained by the environment alone, suggesting signatures of alternative forest states. Moreover, we empirically demonstrate the existence of positive feedbacks in tree growth, recruitment and mortality, with trees having 4–43% higher growth rates, 14–17% higher survival rates and 4–7 times higher recruitment rates when they are surrounded by trees of their own leaf type. Simulations show that the observed positive feedbacks are necessary and sufficient to generate alternative forest states, which also lead to dependency on history (hysteresis) during ecosystem transition from evergreen to deciduous forests and vice versa. We identify hotspots of bistable forest types in evergreen-deciduous ecotones, which are likely driven by soil-related positive feedbacks. These findings are integral to predicting the distribution of forest biomes, and aid to our understanding of biodiversity, carbon turnover, and terrestrial climate feedbacks.