@arthurobuntspecht
#Ecosystem Science and Impacts of #Climate Change; #Forest #Ecology; #Biodiversity. | Ecosystem Ecology group at @wslresearch.bsky.social | | Professor at @usyseth.bsky.social | | Head of the @SwissForestLab.bsky.social |
The future of Europe’s forest disturbance regimes– a thread.
Tl, dr: Disturbances from wildfire, bark beetles & wind will continue to increase in the coming decades. Under unabated climate change disturbances could more than double by 2100.
New paper out in @science.org doi.org/10.1126/scie...
Summer School "Forests for the Future: Strategies for Carbon Sequestration"
16–21 August 2026; Congressi Stefano Franscini at Monte Verità, Ascona, Switzerland
Deadline: 30 April 2026
Applications can be submitted to: swissforestlab_summerschool@wsl.ch
swissforestlab.wsl.ch/en/veranstal...
Paper out!🌳🐾Vital role of human footprint in altering forest resilience after disturbances.
Forest resilience anomalies after extreme droughts relate to species richness positively or negatively, but when human pressure is included, its interaction with species richness diminishes forest resilience.
Finally out in @natmicrobiol.nature.com: Prediction of eukaryotic cellular complexity in Asgard archaea using structural modelling. Great work by @stephkoe.bsky.social @kassipan.bsky.social @jvhooff.bsky.social
www.nature.com/articles/s41...
Our new research shows that megadroughts negatively impact #forest #resilience. Managed forests had lower resilience than undisturbed forests, especially in boreal regions. This underscores the importance of mitigating human pressure for maintaining forest resilience. www.nature.com/articles/s41...
🚨Finally out!🚨 'The distribution of mycorrhizal fungi on tree barks correlates with the host preference of the tropical epiphytic #orchid Bulbophyllum variegatum on La Réunion island' in Fungal Biology by Rémi Petrolli, @drdavidlroberts.bsky.social & many others doi.org/10.1016/j.fu...
Our new study highlights the importance of #biodiversity #conservation across scales in #drylands and provides insights for designing aridity-specific biodiversity conservation policies.
www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...
(🧵8/8) ...to advance mechanism-based forest management strategies for climate adaptation and climate change mitigation.
(🧵7/8) The collaboration is anchored by the leadership of the Swiss Federal Research Institute WSL and ETH Zurich, bringing together expertise from institutions across Switzerland, Germany, Israel, and the United States...
(🧵6/8) Recognizing the complexity of climate-smart forest management challenges, the team expanded to include specialists from theoretical ecology, data science, modeling, biodiversity, and forest operations.
(🧵5/8) ...Henrik Hartmann (Julius Kühn-Institute, Germany), and Nate McDowell (Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, USA). Arthur played a pivotal role in connecting ecophysiologists with forestry-focused researchers including Alessandra Bottero, Harald Bugmann, and Andreas Rigling.
🌱 The authors behind the paper 🌱
(🧵4/8) The authors of this #TansleyReview represent an interdisciplinary collaboration that originated from an initial idea conceived several years ago by Arthur Gessler (WSL/ETH Zurich, Switzerland)...
(🧵3/8) ...can help forests survive and thrive in hotter, drier conditions. The findings provide insights into climate-smart forestry practices for our changing world.
(🧵2/8) Forests face increasing threats from heat and drought caused by climate change. This #TansleyReview examines how different forest management techniques, such as choosing the right tree species, controlling forest density, and managing nutrients...
Fig. 2 Conceptual model of the expected role of dryland mechanisms along a climatic gradient from cool and moist towards hot and dry conditions (x-axis), and their relevance for climate-smart forestry (CSF, y
✨ Paper spotlight ✨
(🧵1/8) Shaping Future Forests: How can ecophysiology support climate-smart forest management?
nph.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...
#PlantScience
Flow diagram with colored boxes and arrows showing relationships between climate factors, tree physiology, ecosystem processes, and forest services. Magenta, dark blue, and dark green elements represent different types of climate impacts. Orange, dark blue, and dark green arrows indicate feedback loops to ecosystem services. Based on tree physiology (physiological damage mechanisms and their impacts on ecosystem functioning), concrete CSF measures are proposed to mitigate the negative effects of climate change on forest ecosystem services.
We provide an ecophysiology-based concept for climate-smart forestry (CSF) that accounts for physiological damage mechanisms associated with heat and drought and their impacts on ecosystem functioning and services.
Conceptual model of the expected role of dryland mechanisms along a climatic gradient from cool and moist towards hot and dry conditions, and their relevance for climate-smart forestry.
Ecophysiology for climate-smart forest management
#TansleyReview by Gessler et al. @wslresearch.bsky.social @arthurobuntspecht.bsky.social @annekempel.bsky.social @josegruenzweig.bsky.social
nph.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...
#plantscience
We do not offer simple fixes, but instead present a thorough discussion of possible strategies and the multiple associated factors that would need to be considered in actual management decisions.
In our new work, we present a mechanism-based critical assessment of #forest #management practices to support climate-smart forestry in response to shifting environmental and climatic conditions. @newphyt.bsky.social Tansley Review:
nph.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...
A lot of people, including me, were wondering how an IRB could ever approve this study.
The answer is that no IRB did. The person who “signed off” on approval from the only ethics board that reviewed it had resigned three years earlier. His signature was used without his knowledge.
“She has a message for other tourists considering a trip to America:
“‘Don’t go – not with Trump in charge. It’s totally out of control over there. There’s no accountability. They don’t seem to need a reason for detaining you.’”
Stand up for science on March 7th!
@standupforscience.bsky.social
If we don’t stand up no one will
I also have often made this observation stated below: the arguments of the deniers of human-caused climate change are so poor, so easily refuted, and intended only for gullible lay people, that they basically prove how strong and compelling the evidence for human-caused climate change really is.
"While it is very interesting, I feel that your article might be better suited to a specialist journal", rock'n'roll edition.
The science is clear. The stakes are real.
AGU condemns the repeal of the EPA Endangerment Finding — a decision that rejects the overwhelming evidence and undermines climate accountability.
We will continue to defend science and advocate for evidence-based policy.
buff.ly/wX1BQ2t
Happy International Day of Women and Girls in Science!
🧬🧪🥼
#WomenInScience #WomenInStem #FraueninderWissenschaft #FraueninMINT #MintFrauen #InternationalDayOfWomenAndGirlsInScience @women__in__stem @mint_leben
Fig. 6 Proposed benefit of an isotope-based carbon (C)-flux proxy.
#TansleyReview: Rethinking the 2H fingerprint of carbohydrates: a novel proxy for #plant #metabolism and performance
Holloway-Phillips et al.
👇
📖 nph.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...
#LatestIssue @arthurobuntspecht.bsky.social @ma-cormier.bsky.social @lucascernusak.bsky.social
How do trees withstand drought?🌲🧪Research by Valentina Vitali and colleagues uses lasers to read tree rings like a "black box." 👉https://usys.ethz.ch/en/news-events/news/archive/2026/01/conifers.html @wslresearch.bsky.social
Lässt sich #Trockenheit in Wäldern aus der Luft erkennen? Im #Hitzesommer 2023 hat die WSL mit #Drohnen untersucht, wie unterschiedliche einheimische Baumarten mit übermässiger Sonneneinstrahlung und #Wassermangel umgehen. Mehr dazu: www.wsl.ch/de/news/troc... #Wald #Forschung
🍁 Can #drought in forests be detected from the air? During the hot summer of 2023, the WSL used #drones to investigate how different native tree species cope with excessive sunlight and water shortages: www.wsl.ch/en/news/dete... #WaterShortage #forest #research #trees 🌏