Trees need up to four years to recover from a drought – The Universe

The trees needed an average of two to four years to recover their growth rates after severe droughts, increased period established by global models that relate climate and vegetation, and assume an almost immediate recovery.

The study, published in the journal Science, suggests, therefore, that forests as a result of the slow recovery after a drought, are able to store less carbon than had been calculated with models of climate and vegetation and this would imply that climate change can also be faster than previously thought.

These are among the findings of a team led by William RL article Anderegg, University of Utah (USA), and the Spanish side signing Julio Camarero Jesus, scientist of the Higher Council for Scientific Research (CSIC) in the Pyrenean Institute of Ecology (Zaragoza).

The forests play an important role in buffering of climate change caused by human activities paper. trees set much of the CO2 through photosynthesis and transformed and synthesized some of that stored carbon in wood

This regulation of the global carbon cycle is critical for the planet, stressed Efe Waiter, and the finding that drought stress slows tree growth over the years indicates that forests are able to store less carbon than calculated.

“If forests are not as good retaining carbon dioxide, this means that climate change could accelerate,” Anderegg said in a press release from the University of Utah.

In reaching these conclusions, the researchers analyzed a global database of tree growth (International Tree Ring Data Bank), a base constructed from measurements of growth rings provided by scientists around the world.

In particular, studied the recovery of trees over 1,300 non-tropical forests, after severe droughts in the second half of the twentieth century, including 1994 and 1995 in Spain and 2003 in the center of Europe .

Study of tree rings

Dendrochronology is the science that studies the growth rings in tree trunks and through dendrochronological techniques researchers could rebuild growth after droughts and get an idea of ​​how forests convert carbon over time.

Once established the years it took the trees to recover, the researchers compared the data with calculation of the theoretical models of climate and vegetation.

Thus, according to this study, the growth was about 9% lower than expected during the first year of recovery and 5% lower in the second year. The effects of the drought were most pronounced in families Pinaceae (pines and other conifers) and in semiarid areas

According Anderegg, the impact on CO2 storage capacity “is not insignificant. For more a century, the carbon storage capacity of arid ecosystems would be reduced by about 1.6 gigatons, an amount greater than the total carbon emissions related to energy produced in the US in one year. ” (I)