ArticleScience advances2024
Drought- and heat-induced mortality of conifer trees is explained by leaf and growth legacies.
Article in Science advances, 2024. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 10 papers, 1 of them a synthesis that pooled it.
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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.
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Who cites it
10 citing papers in PubMed, 1 synthesis or guideline pooled it, 29 citations in OpenAlex.
- Limited plastic responses in safety traits support greater hydraulic risk under drier conditions.Nature ecology & evolution · 2025Pooled it
- Increasing risk of vapor pressure deficit exceeding critical thresholds for tree growth.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2026Article
- On the relationship between root economics and plant hydraulic traits.The New phytologist · 2026Article
- Article
- Legacies from early-season hot drought: how growth cessation alters tree water dynamics and modifies stress responses in Scots pine.Plant biology (Stuttgart, Germany) · 2026Article
- QuantifyingEcology and evolution · 2026Article
- Primary and secondary growth of Pinus halepensis are more sensitive to inter-annual drought variability than to 14 years of rainfall exclusion in a Mediterranean forest.Annals of botany · 2025Article
- Long-Term Temporal Divergence in Post-Drought Resilience Decline Between Deciduous and Evergreen Tree Species.Global change biology · 2025Article
- Loss of Stomatal Regulation Sensitivity to COGlobal change biology · 2025Article
- Stress dose explains drought recovery in Norway spruce.Frontiers in plant science · 2025Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
3 authors at 2 institutions in 2 countries.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
An increased frequency and severity of droughts and heat waves have resulted in increased tree mortality and forest dieback across the world, but underlying mechanisms are poorly understood. We used a common garden experiment with 20 conifer tree species to quantify mortality after three consecutive hot, dry summers and tested whether mortality could be explained by putative underlying mechanisms, such as stem hydraulics and legacies affected by leaf life span and stem growth responses to previous droughts. Mortality varied from 0 to 79% across species and was not affected by hydraulic traits. Mortality increased with species' leaf life span probably because leaf damage caused crown dieback and contributed to carbon depletion and bark beetle damage. Mortality also increased with lower growth resilience, which may exacerbate the contribution of carbon depletion and bark beetle sensitivity to tree mortality. Our study highlights how ecological legacies at different time scales can explain tree mortality in response to hot, dry periods and climate change.
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Registered trials
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