Sponsor
The International Tree Mortality Network acknowledges funding from the Volkswagen Foundation for the symposium ‘Crossing scales and disciplines to identify global trends in tree mortality as indicator of forest health’ (A122411–AZ 92813), which initiated this collaboration. Open Access article funding was enabled and organized by Projekt DEAL. Additional funding acknowledgements are noted in the article.
Published In
New Phytologist
Document Type
Article
Publication Date
3-2025
Subjects
Climatic changes, Trees -- Mortality
Abstract
Rates of tree mortality are increasing globally, with implications for forests and climate. Yet, how and why these trends vary globally remain unknown. Developing a comprehensive assessment of global tree mortality will require systematically integrating data from ground-based long-term forest monitoring with large-scale remote sensing. We surveyed the metadata from 466 865 forest monitoring plots across 89 countries and five continents using questionnaires and discuss the potential to use these to estimate tree mortality trends globally. Our survey shows that the area monitored has increased steadily since 1960, but we also identify many regions with limited ground-based information on tree mortality. The integration of existing ground-based forest inventories with remote sensing and modelling can potentially fill those gaps, but this requires development of technical solutions and agreements that enable seamless flows of information from the field to global assessments of tree mortality. A truly global monitoring effort should promote fair and equitable collaborations, transferring funding to and empowering scientists from less wealthy regions. Increasing interest in forests as a natural climate solution, the advancement of new technologies and world-wide connectivity means that now a global monitoring system of tree mortality is not just urgently needed but also possible.
Rights
This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. CC BY 4.0: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
DOI
10.1111/nph.20407
Persistent Identifier
https://archives.pdx.edu/ds/psu/43031
Citation Details
Holz, A., & International Tree Mortality Network. (2025). Towards a global understanding of tree mortality. New Phytologist, 245(6), 2377–2392. https://doi.org/10.1111/nph.20407
