Evidence map›Paper›PMID 35795901›Full record

ArticleGlobal change biology2022

Soil-plant interactions modulated water availability of Swiss forests during the 2015 and 2018 droughts.

Katrin Meusburger, Volodymyr Trotsiuk, Paul Schmidt-Walter, Andri Baltensweiler, Philipp Brun, Fabian Bernhard, Mana Gharun, Raphael Habel, Frank Hagedorn, Roger Köchli and 6 more

Abstract read
In one paragraph

Article in Global change biology, 2022. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 7 papers.

0numbers the graph read from it
0cells of the map it votes in
7citing papers in PubMed
–field-weighted citation impact
1 · What the graph read from it

What it found

Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.

The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.

2 · The registry

The trial behind it

Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.

Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.

3 · Its place in the literature

Who cites it

7 citing papers in PubMed.

  1. Article
  2. Article
  3. A First Verification of SimSensors (Basel, Switzerland) · 2025
    Article
  4. Article
  5. Article
  6. Article
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4 · The record

Corrections and comments

PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.

5 · Who and what money

Authors and funding

16 authors.

Katrin MeusburgerSwiss Federal Institute for Forest, Snow and Landscape Research (WSL), Birmensdorf, Switzerland.ORCID 0000-0003-4623-6249
Volodymyr TrotsiukSwiss Federal Institute for Forest, Snow and Landscape Research (WSL), Birmensdorf, Switzerland.ORCID 0000-0002-8363-656X
Paul Schmidt-WalterAgrometeorological Research Center, German Weather Service (DWD), Braunschweig, Germany.ORCID 0000-0003-2699-0893
Andri BaltensweilerSwiss Federal Institute for Forest, Snow and Landscape Research (WSL), Birmensdorf, Switzerland.ORCID 0000-0003-1933-6535
Philipp BrunSwiss Federal Institute for Forest, Snow and Landscape Research (WSL), Birmensdorf, Switzerland.ORCID 0000-0002-2750-9793
Fabian BernhardSwiss Federal Institute for Forest, Snow and Landscape Research (WSL), Birmensdorf, Switzerland.ORCID 0000-0003-0338-0961
Mana GharunDepartment of Environmental Systems Science, ETH Zürich, Zürich, Switzerland.ORCID 0000-0003-0337-7367
Raphael HabelDepartment of Soil and Environment, Forest Research Institute Baden Württemberg, Freiburg, Germany.
Frank HagedornSwiss Federal Institute for Forest, Snow and Landscape Research (WSL), Birmensdorf, Switzerland.ORCID 0000-0001-5218-7776
Roger KöchliSwiss Federal Institute for Forest, Snow and Landscape Research (WSL), Birmensdorf, Switzerland.
Achilleas PsomasSwiss Federal Institute for Forest, Snow and Landscape Research (WSL), Birmensdorf, Switzerland.
Heike PuhlmannDepartment of Soil and Environment, Forest Research Institute Baden Württemberg, Freiburg, Germany.
Anne ThimonierSwiss Federal Institute for Forest, Snow and Landscape Research (WSL), Birmensdorf, Switzerland.ORCID 0000-0002-4685-1957
Peter WaldnerSwiss Federal Institute for Forest, Snow and Landscape Research (WSL), Birmensdorf, Switzerland.ORCID 0000-0001-8982-6156
Stephan ZimmermannSwiss Federal Institute for Forest, Snow and Landscape Research (WSL), Birmensdorf, Switzerland.
Lorenz WalthertSwiss Federal Institute for Forest, Snow and Landscape Research (WSL), Birmensdorf, Switzerland.ORCID 0000-0002-1790-8563

Funding

No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.

6 · The paper itself

Abstract

Central Europe has been experiencing unprecedented droughts during the last decades, stressing the decrease in tree water availability. However, the assessment of physiological drought stress is challenging, and feedback between soil and vegetation is often omitted because of scarce belowground data. Here we aimed to model Swiss forests' water availability during the 2015 and 2018 droughts by implementing the mechanistic soil-vegetation-atmosphere-transport (SVAT) model LWF-Brook90 taking advantage of regionalized depth-resolved soil information. We calibrated the model against soil matric potential data measured from 2014 to 2018 at 44 sites along a Swiss climatic and edaphic drought gradient. Swiss forest soils' storage capacity of plant-available water ranged from 53 mm to 341 mm, with a median of 137 ± 42 mm down to the mean potential rooting depth of 1.2 m. Topsoil was the primary water source. However, trees switched to deeper soil water sources during drought. This effect was less pronounced for coniferous trees with a shallower rooting system than for deciduous trees, which resulted in a higher reduction of actual transpiration (transpiration deficit) in coniferous trees. Across Switzerland, forest trees reduced the transpiration by 23% (compared to potential transpiration) in 2015 and 2018, maintaining annual actual transpiration comparable to other years. Together with lower evaporative fluxes, the Swiss forests did not amplify the blue water deficit. The 2018 drought, characterized by a higher and more persistent transpiration deficit than in 2015, triggered widespread early wilting across Swiss forests that was better predicted by the SVAT-derived mean soil matric potential in the rooting zone than by climatic predictors. Such feedback-driven quantification of ecosystem water fluxes in the soil-plant-atmosphere continuum will be crucial to predicting physiological drought stress under future climate extremes.

Indexed as

DroughtsSoilEcosystemForestsPlantsSwitzerlandTreesWaterSoilWaterclimate impactEuropean summer droughtphysiological droughtplant-available water storage capacityroot water uptakewater balance

Identifiers

PMID35795901
PMCPMC9546155

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Registered trials

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Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.