New Study: Pervasive increase in tree mortality across the Australian continent associated with increasing temperatures; warming climate is killing Australian trees faster. Increasing heat is killing trees in Canada too.

@bmedlyn.bsky.social‬:

New research from our group: A pervasive increase in tree mortality across the Australian continent – driven by rising temperatures

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Our talented CSC student, Ruiling Lu, collated forest inventory data dating back to the 1940’s from colleagues across the country. After accounting for stand dynamics, we still see a similar increasing trend in mortality in forests from Tassie to the NT, associated with increasing temps

Pervasive increase in tree mortality across the Australian continent by Ruiling Lu et al, Jan 6, 2026, Nature Plants

https://doi.org/10.1038/s41477-025-02188-2

Pervasive increase in tree mortality across the Australian continent Widespread climate-driven increases in background tree mortality rates have the potential to reduce the carbon storage of terrestrial ecosystems, challenging their effectiveness as natural buffers against atmospheric CO 2 enrichment with major consequences for the global carbon budget. However, the global extent of trends in tree mortality and their drivers remains poorly quantified. The Australian continent experiences one of the most variable climates on Earth and is host to a diverse range of forest biomes that have evolved high resistance to disturbance, providing a valuable test case for the pervasiveness of tree mortality trends. Here we compile an 83-year tree dynamics database (1941–2023) from >2,700 forest plots across Australia covering tropical savanna and rainforest and warm and cool temperate forests, to explore spatiotemporal patterns of tree mortality and the associated drivers. Over the past eight decades, we found a consistent trend of increasing tree mortality across the four forest biomes. This temporal trend persisted after accounting for stand structure and was exacerbated in forests with low moisture index or a high competition index. Species with traits associated with high growth rate—low wood density, high specific leaf area and short maximum height—exhibited higher average mortality, but the rate of mortality increase was comparable across different functional groups. Increasing mortality was not associated with increasing growth, given that stand basal area increments either declined or remained unchanged over time, but it was associated with increasing temperature over time.

Our findings suggest that ongoing climate change has driven pervasive shifts in forest dynamics beyond natural recovery in a range of forest biomes with high resilience to disturbance, threatening the enduring capacity of forests to sequester carbon under current and future climate scenarios.

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