ArticleNature communications2020
Excess forest mortality is consistently linked to drought across Europe.
Article in Nature communications, 2020. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 87 papers.
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Who cites it
87 citing papers in PubMed.
- Article
- Cenozoic losses of tree diversity constrain climatic adaptation of Western and Central European forests.Nature communications · 2026Article
- Reforestation Under Climate Change-A Cross-Regional Deadwood Retention Experiment to Develop Multifunctional Forests on Disturbed Norway Spruce Areas.Ecology and evolution · 2026Article
- Effects of fertilization on drought responses in saplings of three European trees species.Tree physiology · 2026Article
- Hemiboreal Stand Development and Living Biomass Carbon Stocks: An Ontogenetic and Typology-Based Assessment Using National Forest Inventory Data.Plants (Basel, Switzerland) · 2026Article
- European beech reproduction is not reduced by drought, including the 2003, 2018, and 2022 extremes.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2026Article
- Increasing forest disturbance enhances habitat suitability for Europe's large herbivores.Nature ecology & evolution · 2026Article
- Rising tree mortality in France is associated with distinct seasonal climate anomalies.Nature communications · 2026Article
- Article
- Tree-ring stable isotopes and growth trajectories reveal early warning signals of drought-induced Scots pine mortality.Tree physiology · 2026Article
- Article
- Climate drivers of historic tree growth in the Vienna Woods and prediction of future performance of eight selected tree species.Forest ecology and management · 2026Article
- Human pressure and biodiversity modify forest resilience after extreme multi-year droughts.Nature ecology & evolution · 2026Article
- Demographic and Structural Variability Modulate Growth Dynamics in European Beech Primary Forests.Global change biology · 2026Article
- Functional traits explain growth response to successive hotter droughts across a wide set of common and future tree species in Europe.Plant biology (Stuttgart, Germany) · 2026Article
- Redistribution of soil water by mature trees towards dry surface soils and uptake by seedlings in a temperate forest.Plant biology (Stuttgart, Germany) · 2026Article
- Turgor loss point explains climate-driven growth reductions in trees in Central Europe.Plant biology (Stuttgart, Germany) · 2026Article
- Europe-wide maps of biomass density based on satellite remote sensing data for 2017, 2020, 2021 and 2023.Data in brief · 2026Article
- Physiological and Biochemical Characters of Eight Native Tree Seedings in Guangdong Province During Drought Stress and Rewatering Treatment.Plants (Basel, Switzerland) · 2026Article
- Seasonal ecological quality in China: concurrent and lagged drought responses and dominant factors.Frontiers in plant science · 2026Article
27 more citing papers are in PubMed but not listed here.
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Authors and funding
5 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Pulses of tree mortality caused by drought have been reported recently in forests around the globe, but large-scale quantitative evidence is lacking for Europe. Analyzing high-resolution annual satellite-based canopy mortality maps from 1987 to 2016 we here show that excess forest mortality (i.e., canopy mortality exceeding the long-term mortality trend) is significantly related to drought across continental Europe. The relationship between water availability and mortality showed threshold behavior, with excess mortality increasing steeply when the integrated climatic water balance from March to July fell below -1.6 standard deviations of its long-term average. For -3.0 standard deviations the probability of excess canopy mortality was 91.6% (83.8-97.5%). Overall, drought caused approximately 500,000 ha of excess forest mortality between 1987 and 2016 in Europe. We here provide evidence that drought is an important driver of tree mortality at the continental scale, and suggest that a future increase in drought could trigger widespread tree mortality in Europe.
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