ORCID Profile
0000-0002-5145-178X
Current Organisation
University of Wrocław
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Publisher: Wiley
Date: 12-09-2021
Abstract: Woody species' requirements and environmental sensitivity change from seedlings to adults, a process referred to as ontogenetic shift. Such shifts can be increased by climate change. To assess the changes in the difference of temperature experienced by seedlings and adults in the context of climate change, it is essential to have reliable climatic data over long periods that capture the thermal conditions experienced by the in iduals throughout their life cycle. Here we used a unique cross‐European database of 2,195 pairs of resurveyed forest plots with a mean intercensus time interval of 37 years. We inferred macroclimatic temperature (free‐air conditions above tree canopies—representative of the conditions experienced by adult trees) and microclimatic temperature (representative of the juvenile stage at the forest floor, inferred from the relationship between canopy cover, distance to the coast and below‐canopy temperature) at both surveys. We then address the long‐term, large‐scale and multitaxa dynamics of the difference between the temperatures experienced by adults and juveniles of 25 temperate tree species. We found significant, but species‐specific, variations in the perceived temperature (calculated from presence/absence data) between life stages during both surveys. Additionally, the difference of the temperature experienced by the adult versus juveniles significantly increased between surveys for 8 of 25 species. We found evidence of a relationship between the difference of temperature experienced by juveniles and adults over time and one key functional trait (i.e. leaf area). Together, these results suggest that the temperatures experienced by adults versus juveniles became more decoupled over time for a subset of species, probably due to the combination of climate change and a recorded increase of canopy cover between the surveys resulting in higher rates of macroclimate than microclimate warming. Synthesis . We document warming and canopy‐cover induced changes in the difference of the temperature experienced by juveniles and adults. These findings have implications for forest management adaptation to climate change such as the promotion of tree regeneration by creating suitable species‐specific microclimatic conditions. Such adaptive management will help to mitigate the macroclimate change in the understorey layer.
Publisher: Wiley
Date: 18-01-2018
DOI: 10.1111/GCB.14030
Abstract: The contemporary state of functional traits and species richness in plant communities depends on legacy effects of past disturbances. Whether temporal responses of community properties to current environmental changes are altered by such legacies is, however, unknown. We expect global environmental changes to interact with land‐use legacies given different community trajectories initiated by prior management, and subsequent responses to altered resources and conditions. We tested this expectation for species richness and functional traits using 1814 survey‐resurvey plot pairs of understorey communities from 40 European temperate forest datasets, syntheses of management transitions since the year 1800, and a trait database. We also examined how plant community indicators of resources and conditions changed in response to management legacies and environmental change. Community trajectories were clearly influenced by interactions between management legacies from over 200 years ago and environmental change. Importantly, higher rates of nitrogen deposition led to increased species richness and plant height in forests managed less intensively in 1800 (i.e., high forests), and to decreases in forests with a more intensive historical management in 1800 (i.e., coppiced forests). There was evidence that these declines in community variables in formerly coppiced forests were ameliorated by increased rates of temperature change between surveys. Responses were generally apparent regardless of sites’ contemporary management classifications, although sometimes the management transition itself, rather than historic or contemporary management types, better explained understorey responses. Main effects of environmental change were rare, although higher rates of precipitation change increased plant height, accompanied by increases in fertility indicator values. Analysis of indicator values suggested the importance of directly characterising resources and conditions to better understand legacy and environmental change effects. Accounting for legacies of past disturbance can reconcile contradictory literature results and appears crucial to anticipating future responses to global environmental change.
Publisher: Wiley
Date: 05-10-2020
DOI: 10.1002/FEE.2266
Publisher: Elsevier BV
Date: 08-2018
Publisher: Elsevier BV
Date: 11-2018
DOI: 10.1016/J.ENVPOL.2018.07.089
Abstract: Understorey communities can dominate forest plant ersity and strongly affect forest ecosystem structure and function. Understoreys often respond sensitively but inconsistently to drivers of ecological change, including nitrogen (N) deposition. Nitrogen deposition effects, reflected in the concept of critical loads, vary greatly not only among species and guilds, but also among forest types. Here, we characterize such context dependency as driven by differences in the amounts and forms of deposited N, cumulative deposition, the filtering of N by overstoreys, and available plant species pools. Nitrogen effects on understorey trajectories can also vary due to differences in surrounding landscape conditions ambient browsing pressure soils and geology other environmental factors controlling plant growth and, historical and current disturbance/management regimes. The number of these factors and their potentially complex interactions complicate our efforts to make simple predictions about how N deposition affects forest understoreys. We review the literature to examine evidence for context dependency in N deposition effects on forest understoreys. We also use data from 1814 European temperate forest plots to test the ability of multi-level models to characterize context-dependent understorey responses across sites that differ in levels of N deposition, community composition, local conditions and management history. This analysis demonstrated that historical management, and plot location on light and pH-fertility gradients, significantly affect how understorey communities respond to N deposition. We conclude that species' and communities' responses to N deposition, and thus the determination of critical loads, vary greatly depending on environmental contexts. This complicates our efforts to predict how N deposition will affect forest understoreys and thus how best to conserve and restore understorey bio ersity. To reduce uncertainty and incorporate context dependency in critical load setting, we should assemble data on underlying environmental conditions, conduct globally distributed field experiments, and analyse a wider range of habitat types.
Publisher: Wiley
Date: 09-2021
DOI: 10.1002/FEE.2393
Publisher: Oxford University Press (OUP)
Date: 21-12-2016
No related grants have been discovered for Krzysztof Swierkosz.