Examinando por Autor "Lloret, Francisco"

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Biodiversity and Management as Central Players in the Network of Relationships Underlying Forest Resilience
(Wiley, 2025-05-12) Hurtado, Pilar; Espelta, Josep Maria; Jaime, Luciana; Martínez-Vilalta, Jordi; Kokolaki, Manto Samou; Lindner, Marcus; Lloret, Francisco
Global change is threatening the integrity of forest ecosystems worldwide, amplifying the need for resilience-based management to ensure their conservation and sustain the services they provide. Yet, current efforts are still limited by the lack of implementation of clear frameworks for operationalizing resilience in decision-making processes. To overcome this limitation, we aim to identify reliable and effective drivers of forest resilience, considering their synergies and trade-offs. From a comprehensive review of 342 scientific articles addressing resilience in forests globally, we identified factors shaping forest resilience. We recognized them into two categories that influence forest responses to disturbances: resilience predictors, which can be modified through management, and codrivers, which are measurable but largely unmanageable (e.g., climate). We then performed network analyses based on predictors and codrivers underlying forest resilience. In total, we recognized 5332 such relationships linking predictors or codrivers with forest attributes resilience. Our findings support the central role of biodiversity, with mixed, non-planted, or functionally diverse forests promoting resilience across all contexts and biomes. While management also enhanced resilience, the success of specific interventions was highly context-dependent, suggesting that its application requires a careful analysis of trade-offs. Specifically, practices like cutting and prescribed burning generally enhanced resilience in terms of tree growth, plant diversity, landscape vegetation cover, and stand structure. In contrast, pest and herbivore control reduced the resilience of plant taxonomic diversity while offering only minimal gains for other variables. Even long-term restoration projects showed clear trade-offs in the resilience of different forest attributes, highlighting the need for careful consideration of these effects in practical management decisions. Overall, we emphasize that a reduced number of predictors can be used to effectively promote forest resilience across most attributes. Particularly, enhancing biodiversity and implementing targeted management strategies when biodiversity is impoverished emerge as powerful tools to promote forest resilience.
Water availability, stand structure, and hydraulic trait diversity drive forest stability
(Elsevier, 2025-10-15) Roces-Díaz, José V.; García-Valdés, Raúl; Cáceres, Miquel de; Descals, Adrià; Hurtado, Pilar; Lloret, Francisco; Espelta, Josep María; Álvarez-Martínez, José Manuel; Batllori, Enric; Martínez-Vilalta, Jordi
Forest productivity, essential for climate change mitigation, is increasingly threatened by environmental fluctuations, particularly droughts. Temporal stability in forest productivity —its ability to remain consistent over time— is influenced by climate, forest structure, community maturity, and tree composition and diversity. However, while the effect of taxonomic composition and diversity on forest stability has been extensively studied, the role of composition and diversity in drought related trait has received less attention. This study explores how drought-tolerance traits, alongside climatic and structural factors affect forest stability between 2000 and 2018 across ∼40,000 forest plots in Spain. We used satellite-derived vegetation indices as proxies for productivity to assess stability, and forest inventory data and species traits to calculate community-level drought tolerance. Water availability was the strongest positive driver of stability, with temporal stability, soil water-holding capacity, and forest maturity and density also contributing positively, though to a lesser extent. Minimum temperature had a small and negative effect. Functional diversity in drought-tolerance traits related to hydraulic safety (P50 and Hydraulic Safety Margin) had a modest but statistically significant and consistent positive effect on stability. Community-weighted mean trait values showed mixed effects. While climate was the dominant factor shaping forest stability, but our findings highlight a relevant role of drought-tolerance diversity, providing a potential mechanism to explain previous findings that drought-tolerance diversity enhances long-term productivity in drought-prone regions. This suggests that fostering drought-related functional diversification could be considered as a potential management strategy to strengthen the stability of forest ecosystem services, especially amid rising climate variability and drought frequency.