Stronger influence of anthropogenic disturbance than climate change on century-scale compositional changes in northern forests

Victor Danneyrolles (), Sébastien Dupuis, Gabriel Fortin, Marie Leroyer, André Römer, Raphaële Terrail, Mark Vellend, Yan Boucher, Jason Laflamme, Yves Bergeron and Dominique Arseneault
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Victor Danneyrolles: Université du Québec à Rimouski
Sébastien Dupuis: Université du Québec à Rimouski
Gabriel Fortin: Université du Québec à Rimouski
Marie Leroyer: Université du Québec à Rimouski
André Römer: Université du Québec à Rimouski
Raphaële Terrail: Université du Québec à Rimouski
Mark Vellend: Centre d’étude de la forêt (CEF)
Yan Boucher: Centre d’étude de la forêt (CEF)
Jason Laflamme: Centre d’étude de la forêt (CEF)
Yves Bergeron: Université du Québec en Abitibi-Témiscamingue
Dominique Arseneault: Université du Québec à Rimouski

Nature Communications, 2019, vol. 10, issue 1, 1-7

Abstract: Abstract Predicting future ecosystem dynamics depends critically on an improved understanding of how disturbances and climate change have driven long-term ecological changes in the past. Here we assembled a dataset of >100,000 tree species lists from the 19th century across a broad region (>130,000km2) in temperate eastern Canada, as well as recent forest inventories, to test the effects of changes in anthropogenic disturbance, temperature and moisture on forest dynamics. We evaluate changes in forest composition using four indices quantifying the affinities of co-occurring tree species with temperature, drought, light and disturbance. Land-use driven shifts favouring more disturbance-adapted tree species are far stronger than any effects ascribable to climate change, although the responses of species to disturbance are correlated with their expected responses to climate change. As such, anthropogenic and natural disturbances are expected to have large direct effects on forests and also indirect effects via altered responses to future climate change.

Date: 2019
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DOI: 10.1038/s41467-019-09265-z

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