Extreme climatic events and vegetation: the role of stabilizing processes

作者：Francisco Lloret, Adrián Escudero, José María Iriondo, Jordi Martínez‐Vilalta, Fernando Valladares · 发表于：Global Change Biology · 年份：2011 · DOI：10.1111/j.1365-2486.2011.02624.x · 被引用次数：511 · 研究领域：Ecology and Vegetation Dynamics Studies、Plant Water Relations and Carbon Dynamics、Plant and animal studies

Abstract Current climatic trends involve both increasing temperatures and climatic variability, with extreme events becoming more frequent. Increasing concern on extreme climatic events has triggered research on vegetation shifts. However, evidences of vegetation shifts resulting from these events are still relatively rare. Empirical evidence supports the existence of stabilizing processes minimizing and counteracting the effects of these events, reinforcing community resilience. We propose a demographic framework to understand this inertia to change based on the balance between adult mortality induced by the event and enhanced recruitment or adult survival after the event. The stabilizing processes potentially contributing to this compensation include attenuation of the adult mortality caused by the event, due to site quality variability, to tolerance, phenotypic variability, and plasticity at population level, and to facilitative interactions. Mortality compensation may also occur by increasing future survival due to beneficial effect on growth and survival of the new conditions derived from global warming and increased climatic variability, to lowered competition resulting from reduced density in affected stands, or to antagonistic release when pathogens or predators are vulnerable to the event or the ongoing climatic conditions. Finally, mortality compensation may appear by enhanced recruitment due to release of competition with established vegetation, for instance as a c...