Abstract
Based on macroecological data, we test the hypothesis whether European tree species of temperate and boreal distribution maintain their water and nutrient supply in the more arid southern margin of their distribution range by shifting to more fertile soils with higher water storage than in their humid core distribution range (cf. soil compensatory effects). To answer this question, we gathered a large dataset with more than 200,000 plots that we related to summer aridity (SA), derived from WorldClim data, as well as soil available water capacity (AWC) and soil nutrient status, derived from the European soil database. The soil compensatory effects on tree species distribution were tested through generalized additive models. The hypothesis of soil compensatory effects on tree species distribution under limiting aridity was supported in terms of statistical significance and plausibility. Compared to a bioclimatic baseline model, inclusion of soil variables systematically improved the models’ goodness of fit. However, the relevance measured as the gain in predictive performance was small, with largest improvements for P. sylvestris, Q. petraea and A. alba. All studied species, except P. sylvestris, preferred high AWC under high SA. For F. sylvatica, P. abies and Q. petraea, the compensatory effect of soil AWC under high SA was even more pronounced on acidic soils. Soil compensatory effects might have decisive implications for tree species redistribution and forest management strategies under anthropogenic climate change. Therefore, soil compensatory effects deserve more intensive investigation, ideally, in studies combining different spatial scales to reduce the uncertainty associated with the precision of soil information.
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Abbreviations
- AWC:
-
Available water capacity
- DTOL:
-
Tolerances to drought
- EQ:
-
Ellenberg’s climate quotient
- EQm:
-
Modified EQ
- ESDB:
-
European soil database
- LogEQm:
-
Decimal logarithm from EQm
- RSC:
-
Relative site constancy
- SA:
-
Summer aridity
- SDM:
-
Species distribution model
- STOL:
-
Tolerances to shade
- SNS:
-
Soil nutrient status
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Acknowledgements
This study was funded by the Federal Ministry of Food and Agriculture as well as the Federal Environment Ministry of Germany (project number 28WB4058) and the Bavarian State Forest Administration (project number W42), an authority of the Ministry for Nutrition, Agriculture and Forestry. We acknowledge ICP Forests and the involved country representatives for providing Level-I data. Our thanks also go to Nikolaos Grigoriadis from Greece, Aleksander Marinšek, Alexey Zharov from Germany and Doganay Tolunay from Turkey for data provision. However, the Turkish data could not be used in this analysis, as the ESDB do not contain soil data from this country. Additionally, we are deeply indebted to our colleagues, Solti György, Markus Neumann and Heino Polley for providing us access to the national forest inventories of Hungary, Austria and Germany, respectively, as well as Monika Konnert (Bavarian Institution for Forest Seeding and Planting) for providing data from provenance plots. Furthermore, we thank all other contributors of vegetation databases and other data sources as well as two anonymous reviewers whose comments helped to clarify important issues.
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Communicated by Agustín Merino.
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Mellert, K.H., Lenoir, J., Winter, S. et al. Soil water storage appears to compensate for climatic aridity at the xeric margin of European tree species distribution. Eur J Forest Res 137, 79–92 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10342-017-1092-x
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10342-017-1092-x