Rupert Seidl

Personal: This started out as a discussion of an idea with @wernerrammer.bsky.social, sitting in the park block of Portland, Or at an ESA meeting more than 10 years ago. I’m incredibly grateful that we were able to get this far, and excited about the future endeavors that will build on this! (10/10)

Team: This was a truly collaborative effort between 43 scientists from 35 institutions. Led by the great Marc Grünig, and strongly facilitated by @wernerrammer.bsky.social and @corneliussenf.bsky.social at @tum.de, enabled by the FORWARD and RESONATE (led by @marlind.bsky.social) EU projects. (9/10)

Uncertainties: Future trajectories come with uncertainties. One important aspect are future wind extremes, for which we here made conservative assumptions. Also, note that we here focused on the effects of climate, and assumed a continuation of business-as-usual forest management. (8/10)

Policy implications: Together with @efieuropeanforest.bsky.social, we’ve also published a summary for policy makers alongside the scientific paper, highlighting important implications for European forest policy wrt forest planning, monitoring and management (7/10) Link: doi.org/10.36333/pb20

Insights 3: Disturbance change impacts Europe’s forest demography, reducing the share of old forests and increasing the share of young forests on the landscape. This could have profound implications for ecosystem services and biodiversity, and needs to be accounted for in forest policy. (6/10)

Insight 2: Fire is the main driver of increasing future disturbance, and the Mediterranean is particularly affected. However, future disturbance hotspots emerged across biomes, from Finland to Germany and Spain, in our simulations. Disturbance change is thus a challenge at the European scale. (5/10)

Insight 1: In the coming decades, disturbances will continue to increase regardless of emissions pathway. If we effectively reduce emissions, we reach peak disturbance by mid century with declines thereafter. If emissions continue unabated, however, disturbances will continue to soar. (4/10)

Methodology 2: Key advances of our new approach are that amplifying interactions between individual disturbance agents are explicitly accounted for, and that climate - disturbance – vegetation feedbacks are explicitly simulated. (3/10)

Methodology 1: We developed a novel simulation approach, assimilating 135 Mill data points from 17 local forest models into an AI-based meta-model, combined with disturbance models based on remote sensing. This enabled hi res (100m) simulations of large scale (187 Mill ha) forest dynamics. (2/10)

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...

Personal: This started out as a discussion of an idea with @wernerrammer.bsky.social, sitting in the park block of Portland, Or at an ESA meeting more than 10 years ago. I’m incredibly grateful that we were able to get this far, and excited about the future endeavors that will build on this! (10/10)

How does post-disturbance forest recovery differ under different management and land tenure? Interesting insights from analyzing photogrammetric canopy height models in Central Europe with a novel method to modeling recovery, by @kirstenkrueger.bsky.social et al.
doi.org/10.1016/j.fo...

Really nice that a male red deer from Berchtesgaden National Park made it onto the cover of @wildlifebiology.bsky.social. Great photo by Rudolf Reiner, and great work on how red deer navigate a landscape of contrasting hunting regimes and habitats by Juliana Eggers et al. doi.org/10.1002/wlb3...

As climate and disturbance regimes change, forest reorganization is key to maintain the forest carbon sink. Great new work led by @christinadollinger.bsky.social w/ @monicagturner.bsky.social, @akkym.bsky.social and many others. dx.doi.org/10.1029/2025...

However, the currently present regeneration is not well adapted to expected future climate, with 75% of the currently established trees projected to be outside of their climatic niche by the end of the century. Led by @mariapotterf.bsky.social w/ contributions of 29 great colleagues! #teamwork 2/2

Central Europe has seen unprecedented forest disturbances recently, but how are forests recovering? We surveyed disturbance hotspots in 10 countries 3-5 years after disturbance, finding ample tree regeneration and no signs of forest loss (median 4750 stems/ha), but... 1/2 doi.org/10.1111/gcb....

Spring drought could be more detrimental for tree regeneration than summer drought, particularly as climate warms and tree phenology shifts. Results from an experiment in walk-in climate chambers, investigting four contrasting tree species. Led by @munozmazon.bsky.social doi.org/10.1016/j.ag...

Gentle reminder to fill in the survey on forest disturbance change (below). We have *a lot* of great responses already (thank you!) covering all continents and biomes, but the survey will be open for a few more days! Thanks for making the time, your disturbance expertise is highly appreciated!

Patterns and drivers of post-disturbance forest recovery differ considerably across the Alps: Warmer temperatures relax thermal limitations and facilitate recovery in the C and E Alps, but inhibit recovery in the SW Alps. Led by @lisa-mandl.bsky.social et al. doi.org/10.1016/j.ag...

In C Europe, there is a push to align forest management more closely with natural processes, but is this "closer-to-nature" management able to sustain biodiversity and ecosystem services? Great synthesis led by @anastritih.bsky.social with input from many leading experts! doi.org/10.1007/s407...

Calling on all forest disturbance experts: Please consider contributing to our study on global forest disturbance change, and help resolve the nuances of changing forest disturbance regimes. More details and survey here: www.lss.ls.tum.de/edfm/disturb...

What is the effect of increasing disturbances in C European forests on insect diversity, and how does salvage logging modulate it? We found an overall positive response for both cleared and uncleared sites, with a stronger signal for taxonomic vs phylogenetic diversity doi.org/10.1016/j.bi...

Disturbed areas are preferential habitat for red deer throughout the day, because they combine forage with safety. Great insights from combining remotely sensed disturbance data with GPS collar data in Berchtesgaden National Park, led by J. Eggers and R. Reiner, doi.org/10.1016/j.fo...

We’re opening the doors for community meetings. Your chance to influence our next steps & get more involved in the network.

Join one of our upcoming sessions:

🗓 Dec 4 — 06:00 UTC
t1p.de/m3gty

🗓 Dec 4 — 18:00 UTC
t1p.de/xaxsu

🗓 Dec 5 — 13:00 UTC
t1p.de/c4icd

Help guide where ITMN goes next! 🚀

I wholeheartedly agree, and feel incredibly blessed and grateful to being able to do research in such a magnificent landscape!

Global, multi-scale standing deadwood segmentation in centimeter-scale aerial images. Important work by J. Möhring, @cmosig.bsky.social, T. Kattenborn et al. in detecting dead trees across biomes from high resolution aerial images. doi.org/10.1016/j.op...

#2: Landscape context modulates the effect of local canopy cover on forest multidiversity across elevations by T. Richter doi.org/10.1111/1365...

Thanks to @sebseibold.bsky.social and many others for their contributions, looking forward to continue our efforts to better understand biodiv change!

Great to see the results of our massive biodiversity assessment at Berchtesgaden Natl. Park pour in! Cool insights on patterns & drivers of multidiversity!

#1 Macro- and microclimate interactively shape species diversity of multiple taxa in mountain landscapes by L. Geres. doi.org/10.1002/ecog...

Biotic disturbances are synchronized across large spatial scales. Also, they are consistently greater under warmer and drier conditions across feeding guilds and host types, suggesting that climate change could substantially amplify biotic forest disturbances.

Mortality from fire & wind is increasing in Europe's forests, but what about biotic disturbances? A new, massive dataset compiled by @thlasny.bsky.social and many local experts shows a mixed picture: While wood borers increase strongly, defoliator activity generally decreases doi.org/10.1111/gcb....