Chilling is an important cue in the spring phenology of boreal and temperate tree species. It is well established that increased chilling reduces the days to bud break (DTB), but the effectiveness of different cold temperatures for chilling accumulation remains unknown for most species. Depending on this effectiveness, future warmer winters could either reduce or increase chilling accumulation for different tree species, resul...

Persistent uncertainty about the economic implications of agroforestry presents a significant barrier to adoption. Despite this, most research to date ignores the impact of uncertainty on land allocation decisions, with studies commonly relying on simplistic scenarios involving a dichotomous choice between switching entirely to agroforestry or retaining the status quo system. For a more realistic decision problem, we explored...

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 mitigation strategies. Recent tree‐ring studies have shown that trees at higher latitude...

Leaf coloring and fall mark the end of the growing season (EOS), playing essential roles in nutrient cycling, resource allocation, ecological interactions, and as climate change indicators. However, understanding future changes in autumn phenology is challenging due to the multitude of likely environmental cues and substantial variations in timing caused by different derivation methods. Yet, it remains unclear whether these tw...

Winter tourism is an important economic factor in the European Alps, which could be exposed to severely changing meteorological conditions due to climate change in the future. The extent to which meteorology influences winter tourism figures has so far been analyzed mainly based on monthly or seasonal data and in relation to skier numbers. Therefore, we record for the first time daily visitor numbers at five Bavarian winter to...

The twig method in climate chambers has been shown to successfully work as a proxy for outdoor manipulations in various experimental setups. This study was conducted to further establish this method for the investigation of allergenic pollen from tree species (hazel, alder, and birch). Direct comparison under outdoor conditions revealed that the cut twigs compared to donor trees were similar in the timing of flowering and the...

Climate change impacts on the structure and function of ecosystems will worsen public health issues like allergic diseases. Birch trees ( Betula spp.) are important sources of aeroallergens in Central and Northern Europe. Birches are vulnerable to climate change as these trees are sensitive to increased temperatures and summer droughts. This study aims to examine the effect of climate change on airborne birch pollen concentrat...

Phenology serves as a major indicator of ongoing climate change. Long-term phenological observations are critically important for tracking and communicating these changes. The phenological observation network across Germany is operated by the National Meteorological Service with a major contribution from volunteering activities. However, the number of observers has strongly decreased for the last decades, possibly resulting in...

Climate warming has substantially advanced spring leaf flushing, but winter chilling and photoperiod co‐determine the leaf flushing process in ways that vary among species. As a result, the interspecific differences in spring phenology (IDSP) are expected to change with climate warming, which may, in turn, induce negative or positive ecological consequences. However, the temporal change of IDSP at large spatiotemporal scales r...

The flowering phenology of Coltsfoot ( Tussilago farfara L.) shows a very strong negative response to warmer temperatures in spring (warmer springs = earlier flowering) as reported in numerous studies for other species in Europe and North America. However, despite this, flowering dates in some locations have failed to show a strong advance and, in a small number of cases, have even shown significant delays. Here we use a very...

Anthropogenic nitrogen (N) deposition and resulting differences in ecosystem N and phosphorus (P) ratios are expected to impact photosynthetic capacity, that is, maximum gross primary productivity (GPP max ). However, the interplay between N and P availability with other critical resources on seasonal dynamics of ecosystem productivity remains largely unknown. In a Mediterranean tree–grass ecosystem, we established three lands...

Global climate change is expected to further raise the frequency and severity of extreme events, such as droughts. The effects of extreme droughts on trees are difficult to disentangle given the inherent complexity of drought events (frequency, severity, duration, and timing during the growing season). Besides, drought effects might be modulated by trees’ phenotypic variability, which is, in turn, affected by long‐term local s...

A paper published in Global Change Biology in 2006 revealed that phenological responses in 1971–2000 matched the warming pattern in Europe, but a lack of chilling and adaptation in farming may have reversed these findings. Therefore, for 1951–2018 in a corresponding data set, we determined changes as linear trends and analysed their variation by plant traits/groups, across season and time as well as their attribution to warmin...

Climate change may reduce forest growth and increase forest mortality, which is connected to high carbon costs through reductions in gross primary production and net ecosystem exchange. Yet, the spatiotemporal patterns of vulnerability to both short‐term extreme events and gradual environmental changes are quite uncertain across the species’ limits of tolerance to dryness. Such information is fundamental for defining ecologica...