Key message Siberian evergreen conifers maintain stable starch reserves, while deciduous larch adopts a dynamic carbon strategy with autumn NSC accumulation to fuel spring growth, enhancing boreal forest resilience. Abstract Non-structural carbohydrates (NSC) play a fundamental role in tree growth, metabolism, and resilience by buffering temporal imbalances between carbon supply and demand. However, comparative studies integra...

The persistence of organisms in changing climates depends on both phenotypic plasticity and adaptation. However, despite extensive research, it remains largely unclear how forest trees will genetically adapt or phenotypically acclimate to future climates. In this study, we investigated the genetic architecture of tree‐ring and leaf traits in sessile oak ( Quercus petraea ) and European beech ( Fagus sylvatica ) and tested for...

Increasing aridity is a major threat to forests worldwide. Understanding tree functional constraints under drought and their impacts on resilience and mortality among species is crucial to assess the impacts of global change on forests. We analyzed the long‐term drought and atmospheric CO 2 responses in three Mediterranean co‐occurring species with differing drought tolerances ( Pinus pinaster Pinus pinea Juniperus oxycedrus )...

Stomata control plant water loss and photosynthetic carbon gain. Developing more generalized and accurate stomatal models is essential for earth system models and predicting responses under novel environmental conditions associated with global change. Plant optimality theories offer one promising approach, but most such theories assume that stomatal conductance maximizes photosynthetic net carbon assimilation subject to some c...

Emerging diseases caused by both native and exotic pathogens represent a main threat to forest ecosystems worldwide. The two invasive soilborne pathogens Phytophthora cinnamomi and Phytophthora × cambivora are the causal agents of ink disease, which has been threatening Castanea sativa in Europe for several centuries and seems to be re‐emerging in recent years. Here, we investigated the distribution, causal agents, and infecti...

Despite growing interest in predicting plant phenological shifts, advanced spring phenology by global climate change remains debated. Evidence documenting either small or large advancement of spring phenology to rising temperature over the spatio‐temporal scales implies a potential existence of a thermal threshold in the responses of forests to global warming. We collected a unique data set of xylem cell‐wall‐thickening onset...

Motivation Trait variation within species can reveal plastic and/or genetic responses to environmental gradients, and may indicate where local adaptation has occurred. Here, we present a dataset of rangewide variation in leaf traits from seven of the most ecologically and economically important tree species in Europe. Sample collection and trait assessment are embedded in the GenTree project (EU‐Horizon 2020), which aims at ch...

Wood growth constitutes the main process for long‐term atmospheric carbon sequestration in vegetation. However, our understanding of the process of wood growth and its response to environmental drivers is limited. Current dynamic global vegetation models (DGVMs) are mainly photosynthesis‐driven and thus do not explicitly include a direct environmental effect on tree growth. However, physiological evidence suggests that, to rea...

Extreme climate events (ECEs) such as severe droughts, heat waves, and late spring frosts are rare but exert a paramount role in shaping tree species distributions. The frequency of such ECEs is expected to increase with climate warming, threatening the sustainability of temperate forests. Here, we analyzed 2,844 tree‐ring width series of five dominant European tree species from 104 Swiss sites ranging from 400 to 2,200 m a.s....

The phenology of wood formation is a critical process to consider for predicting how trees from the temperate and boreal zones may react to climate change. Compared to leaf phenology, however, the determinism of wood phenology is still poorly known. Here, we compared for the first time three alternative ecophysiological model classes ( threshold models, heat‐sum models and chilling‐influenced heat‐sum models) and an empirical...

The interaction between xylem phenology and climate assesses forest growth and productivity and carbon storage across biomes under changing environmental conditions. We tested the hypothesis that patterns of wood formation are maintained unaltered despite the temperature changes across cold ecosystems. Wood microcores were collected weekly or biweekly throughout the growing season for periods varying between 1 and 13 years dur...

Responses of alpine tree line ecosystems to increasing atmospheric CO 2 concentrations and global warming are poorly understood. We used an experiment at the Swiss tree line to investigate changes in vegetation biomass after 9 years of free air CO 2 enrichment (+200 ppm; 2001–2009) and 6 years of soil warming (+4 °C; 2007–2012). The study contained two key tree line species, Larix decidua and Pinus uncinata , both approximatel...