Not including Stress and Damage in Vegetation Climate Change Assessments leads to Underestimate of Impacts.

English Abstract:

Whilst any ecologist is aware that species performance and distribution is affected, and often determined, by extreme events as much as average climate conditions, this fact is frequently neglected by climate change modellers. Given intrinsic correlations between mean conditions and extreme event frequencies in many areas this may be acceptable for broad scale vegetation type modelling however where modelling seeks to forecast particular species performance, as for example in agricultural or forestry crop yields, ignoring stress and damage events may lead to misleading forecasts.

In this work using Australia's principal plantation species as exemplar systems, we demonstrate the likely underestimate of climate change impacts if drought damage and mortality (as compared with reduced growth from a drying climate) and changes in host-pest relations are considered compared to when they are not. The magnitude of difference over the Australian plantation estate is shown to vary locally from 5 to 50% in impact (measured as harvested wood volume, and total system carbon stocks).