Alistair S Jump

University of Stirling · Department of Biological and Environmental Sciences

Legacies of human land use have the potential to impact demographic responses to climate. However, few studies have investigated the interactive effects of land use legacies and climate change on tree demography. The demographic performance of rear edge populations in particular is an important determinant of a species' long‐term persistence. In th...

With ongoing global warming, increasing water deficits promote physiological stress on forest ecosystems with negative impacts on tree growth, vitality, and survival. How individual tree species will react to increased drought stress is therefore a key research question to address for carbon accounting and the development of climate change mitigati...

The future performance of the widely abundant European beech (Fagus sylvatica L.) across its ecological amplitude is uncertain. Although beech is considered drought-sensitive and thus negatively affected by drought events, scientific evidence indicating increasing drought vulnerability under climate change on a cross-regional scale remains elusive....

A prominent hypothesis in ecology is that larger species ranges are found in more variable climates because species develop broader environmental tolerances, predicting a positive range size-temperature variability relationship. However, this overlooks the extreme temperatures that variable climates impose on species, with upper or lower thermal li...

Alpine treelines serve as vital indicators of the impacts of climate change on tree growth and forest distribution. They offer valuable insights into how shifting temperature and precipitation patterns affect ecosystems in treeline ecotones. Analyzing the age structure of tree stands at treelines provides a glimpse into how different generations of...

Functional traits offer a promising avenue to improve predictions of species range shifts under climate change, which will entail warmer and often drier conditions. Although the conceptual foundation linking traits with plant performance and range shifts appears solid, the predictive ability of individual traits remains generally low. In this revie...

Forest ecosystems with long-lasting human imprints can emerge worldwide as outcomes of land-use cessation. However, the interaction of these anthropogenic legacies with climate change impacts on forests is not well understood. Here, we set out how anthropogenic land-use legacies that persist in forest properties, following alterations in forest dis...

Aim: Range shifts are expected to occur when populations at one range margin perform better than those at the other margin, yet no global trend in population performances at range margins has been demonstrated empirically across a wide range of taxa and biomes. Here we test the prediction that, if impacts of ongoing climate change on performance in...

Demand for agricultural land is a potent accelerating driver of global deforestation, presenting multiple interacting issues at different spatiotemporal scales. Here we show that inoculating the root system of tree planting stock with edible ectomycorrhizal fungi (EMF) can reduce the food-forestry land-use conflict, enabling appropriately managed f...

Against a background of intensifying climate-induced disturbances, the need to enhance the resilience of forests and forest management is gaining urgency. In forest management, multiple trade-offs exist between different demands as well as across and within temporal and spatial scales. However, methods to assess resilience that consider these trade...

Understanding how we can increase the resilience of forest systems to future extreme drought events is increasingly important as these events become more frequent and intense. Diversifying production forests using intimate mixtures of trees with complementary functional traits is considered as one promising silvicultural approach that may increase...

Major displacement of arctic-alpine species towards higher elevations and latitudes is anticipated under climate warming. Disjunct plant populations persisting on mountains at the limits of their species' distributions may have a reduced capacity for migration, and therefore offer a particularly sensitive indication of climate change effects. The f...

The mechanistic pathways connecting ocean-atmosphere variability and terrestrial productivity are well-established theoretically, but remain challenging to quantify empirically. Such quantification will greatly improve the assessment and prediction of changes in terrestrial carbon sequestration in response to dynamically induced climatic extremes....

Research in global change ecology relies heavily on global climatic grids derived from estimates of air temperature in open areas at around 2 m above the ground. These climatic grids do not reflect conditions below vegetation canopies and near the ground surface, where critical ecosystem functions occur and most terrestrial species reside. Here, we...

Mountain woodland ecotones require urgent action to reverse long‐term habitat degradation and biodiversity loss. There is growing interest in restoring high‐elevation woodland and scrub communities, harnessing planting and natural regeneration. Emissions offsetting has been a key driver, yet mountain systems offer slower mechanisms for biomass accu...

The growth of past, present, and future forests was, is and will be affected by climate variability. This multifaceted relationship has been assessed in several regional studies, but spatially resolved, large-scale analyses are largely missing so far. Here we estimate recent changes in growth of 5800 beech trees ( Fagus sylvatica L.) from 324 sites...

Aim Plant functional traits are broadly used to quantify and predict impacts of climate change on vegetation. However, high intraspecific trait variation can bias mean values when few measurements are available. Here, we determine the extent of individual leaf trait variation and covariation across a highly heterogeneous environmental gradient for...

The increasing intensity and frequency of droughts under climate change demands effective ways to monitor drought impacts. We sought to determine how different satellite remote sensing sources influence our ability to identify temporal and spatial impacts on European beech forest canopy health during intense drought events. Imagery from three satel...

Many studies quantify short-term drought impact on tree growth relative to pre-drought growth averages. However, fewer studies examine the extent to which droughts of differing severity differentially impact tree growth or shape stand dynamics. Focusing on three droughts in high and low density stands of Pinus sylvestris in Scotland, we calculated...

The Caatinga biome is one of the largest areas of the South American seasonally dry tropical forest that has been severely affected by unsustainable natural resource use. Furthermore, the biome has been identified as an ecologically sensitive region that is particularly susceptible to climate changes. One of the most economically important native p...

Research in environmental science relies heavily on global climatic grids derived from estimates of air temperature at around 2 meter above ground1-3. These climatic grids however fail to reflect conditions near and below the soil surface, where critical ecosystem functions such as soil carbon storage are controlled and most biodiversity resides4-8...

Understanding the impacts of extreme drought on forest productivity requires a comprehensive assessment of tree and forest resilience. However, current approaches to quantifying resilience limit our understanding of forest response dynamics, recovery trajectories and drought legacies by constraining the temporal scale and resolution of assessment....

Climate extremes, such as abnormally dry and wet conditions, generate abrupt shifts in tree growth, a situation which is expected to increase under predicted climate conditions. Thus, it is crucial to understand factors determining short‐ and long‐term tree performance in response to higher frequency and intensity of climate extremes. We evaluated...

Numerous charcoal kiln remains can still be found throughout the world, evidencing wood harvesting related to former industries. These remains represent effective sources and tools for studying (i) pre-industrial pressures on forest resources and (ii) past strategies related to woodland management. However, radiocarbon dating (AMS), which is the ma...

Aim At the elevational limit of forest distribution, montane forests show diverse responses to environmental change with upward shifts, increased tree density and lateral expansion reported. To enable informed analysis of the consequences forest advance will have on montane biodiversity, we quantify changes in the area and elevation of the tree lin...

Current analyses and predictions of spatially‐explicit patterns and processes in ecology most often rely on climate data interpolated from standardized weather stations. This interpolated climate data represents long‐term average thermal conditions at coarse spatial resolutions only. Hence, many climate‐forcing factors that operate at fine spatiote...

Ongoing global climate change is driving widespread shifts in species distributions. Trends show frequent upwards shifts of treelines, but information on changes in montane forest below the treeline and in the tropics and subtropics is limited, despite the importance of these areas for biodiversity and ecosystem function. Patterns of species shifts...

Leaf chlorophyll content declines in response to environmental stressors and during natural senescence periods. Assessments of forest health and vulnerability to stressors require repeated measurements of forest health to quantify declines in chlorophyll content and identify shifts in the timing of key phenological events. Although remote sensing i...

Purpose of Review Resilience is a key concept to deal with an uncertain future in forestry. In recent years, it has received increasing attention from both research and practice. However, a common understanding of what resilience means in a forestry context and how to operationalise it is lacking. Here, we conducted a systematic review of the recen...

Current analyses and predictions of spatially‐explicit patterns and processes in ecology most often rely on climate data interpolated from standardized weather stations. This interpolated climate data represents long‐term average thermal conditions at coarse spatial resolutions only. Hence, many climate‐forcing factors that operate at fine spatiote...

Increasing variability and uncertainty regarding future climate provide new challenges for the conservation of endangered tree species. For example, threat status can be impacted by genetic diversity, where forest trees show reduced geographic range size, isolated populations and fragmented distribution. We place the conservation insights of popula...

Climate change is expected to cause major changes in forest ecosystems during the 21 st century and beyond. To assess forest impacts from climate change, the existing empirical information must be structured, harmonised and assimilated into a form suitable to develop and test state-of-the-art forest and ecosystem models. The combination of empirica...

Aim Isolation is expected to lead to negative impacts on populations due to a reduction in effective population size and gene flow, exacerbating the effects of genetic drift, which might be stronger in peripheral and fragmented populations. Fagus sylvatica (European beech) in southern Sweden presents a gradient of isolation towards the leading rang...

Defining and quantifying drought is essential when studying ecosystem responses to such events. Yet, many studies lack either a clear definition of drought, and/or erroneously assume drought under conditions within the range of “normal climatic variability” (c.f. Slette et al., 2019). To improve the general characterization of drought conditions in...

Species rear range edges are predicted to retract as climate warms, yet evidence of population persistence is accumulating. Accounting for this disparity is essential to enable prediction and planning for species’ range retractions. At the Mediterranean edge of European beech‐dominated temperate forest, we tested the hypothesis that individual perf...

Europe is undergoing significant forest expansion due to the abandonment of rural areas driven by economic and demographic changes. Recently established forests provide key ecosystem services such as habitat provision and increased carbon stocks. However, we lack understanding of whether past land use might alter their resilience to climate change...

Global environmental changes are driving shifts in forest distribution across the globe with significant implications for biodiversity and ecosystem function. At the upper elevational limit of forest distribution, patterns of forest advance and stasis can be highly spatially variable. Reliable estimations of forest distribution shifts require asses...

According to broad‐scale application of biogeographical theory, widespread retractions of species’ rear edges should be seen in response to ongoing climate change. This prediction rests on the assumption that rear edge populations are ‘marginal’ since they occur at the limit of the species’ ecological tolerance and are expected to decline in perfor...

Aim Range shifts are expected to occur when populations at one range margin perform better than those at the other margin, yet no global trend in population performances at range margins has been demonstrated empirically across a wide range of taxa and biomes. Here we test the prediction that, if impacts of ongoing climate change on population perf...

Gene flow is one of the main factors shaping genetic diversity within and among tree populations, and occurs through pollen and seed dispersal. Recent findings of pollen-release asynchronies in distant populations of Scots pine (Pinus sylvestris L.) within Scotland suggest that gene dispersal among more distant populations might be less effective t...

Species range shifts have been well studied in light of rising global temperatures and the role climate plays in restricting species distribution. In mountain regions, global trends show upward elevational shifts of altitudinal treelines. However, there is significant variation in response between geographic locations driven by climatic and habitat...

Aim Human impacts have shaped species ranges throughout the Holocene. The putative native range of beech, Fagus sylvatica , in Britain was obscured by its late post‐glacial arrival and subsequent extensive management. We sought to differentiate the interacting effects of post‐glacial colonization and anthropic impacts on the current genetic structu...

Summary Changes in phenology are an inevitable result of climate change, and will have wide-reaching impacts on species, ecosystems, human society and even feedback onto climate. Accurate understanding of phenology is important to adapt to and mitigate such changes. However, analysis of phenology globally has been constrained by lack of data, depe...

Intense droughts combined with increased temperatures are one of the major threats to forest persistence in the 21(st) century. Despite the direct impact of climate change on forest growth and shifts in species abundance, the effect of altered demography on changes in the composition of functional traits is not well known. We sought to: (1) quantif...

Drought events are increasing globally, and reports of consequent forest mortality are widespread. However, due to a lack of a quantitative global synthesis, it is still not clear whether drought-induced mortality rates differ among global biomes and whether functional traits influence the risk of drought-induced mortality. To address these uncerta...

Increasing temperature and drought intensity is inducing the phenomenon of so called “hotter drought”, which is expected to increase in frequency over the coming decades across many areas of the globe, and is expected to have major implications for forest systems. Consequences of hotter drought could be especially relevant for closely-related speci...

Ongoing climate change poses significant threats to plant function and distribution. Increased temperatures and altered precipitation regimes amplify drought frequency and intensity, elevating plant stress and mortality. Large-scale forest mortality events will have far-reaching impacts on carbon and hydrological cycling, biodiversity, and ecosyste...

Ongoing changes in global climate are altering ecological conditions for many species. The consequences of such changes are typically most evident at the edge of a species' geographical distribution, where differences in growth or population dynamics may result in range expansions or contractions. Understanding population responses to different cli...

Natura 2000 is the core pillar in the European Union’s (EU) biodiversity conservation policy. It is an EU-wide ecological network of protected areas that cuts across countries’ borders, administrative levels, policy sectors and socio-economic contexts. The network is established and managed according to the legally-binding provisions of the 1979 EU...

The aim of our study was to determine variation in the response of radial growth in Fagus sylvatica L (European Beech) to climate across the species full geographical distribution and climatic tolerance. We combined new and existing data to build a database of 140 tree-ring chronologies to investigate patterns in growth–climate relationships. Our n...

Aim Biodiversity loss and climate‐driven ecosystem modification are leading to substantial changes in forest structure and function. However, the effects of diversity on demographic responses to the environment are poorly understood. We tested the diversity hypothesis (measured through functional diversity) and the mass ratio hypothesis (measured t...

Large dams cause extensive inundation of habitats, with remaining terrestrial habitat confined to highly fragmented archipelagos of land-bridge islands comprised of former hilltops. Isolation of biological communities on reservoir islands induces local extinctions and degradation of remnant communities. “Good practice” dam development guidelines pr...

Presentation on our paper ”Extinction debt on reservoir land-bridge islands” Biological Conservation, 199, 2016 http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.biocon.2016.04.036

Changes in climate can alter the distribution and population dynamics of tree species by altering their recruitment patterns, especially at range edges. However, geographical patterns of genetic diversity could buffer the negative consequences of changing climate at rear range edges where populations might also harbour individuals with drought-adap...

Biogeographical and ecological theory suggests that species distributions should be driven to higher altitudes and latitudes as global temperatures rise. Such changes occur as growth improves at the poleward edge of a species distribution and declines at the range edge in the opposite or equatorial direction, mirrored by changes in the establishmen...

Aim Climate change is causing shifts in the range of species worldwide. In high‐altitude areas forests are often observed to be shifting their upper limits to higher altitudes in response to warming temperatures. Although this phenomenon is well described, the possible consequences of this for the wider forest community have not been fully consider...

Aim Higher‐elevation areas on islands and continental mountains tend to be separated by longer distances, predicting higher endemism at higher elevations; our study is the first to test the generality of the predicted pattern. We also compare it empirically with contrasting expectations from hypotheses invoking higher speciation with area, temperat...

Invited contribution to a Gabon side event on climate change impacts on tropical forests

Natura 2000 is the core of the EU's biodiversity conservation policy. 50% of the overall protected area under Natura 2000 is forest. Yet, comparatively little is known about the implementation of the policy in forests. Building on a rich set of social and natural science data, and an inter- and transdisciplinary discussion process involving scienti...

Questions An advance of high‐altitude treelines has been reported in response to warming climate throughout the globe. Understanding local controls on the establishment of seedlings above the treeline is essential for predicting wider patterns of treeline response from a process‐based perspective. Here we investigate patterns of seedling establishm...