Biological reactions of forests to climate change and air pollution

Abstract

From May 18 through 26, 2012, the conference on ‘‘Biological Reactions of Forests to Climate Change and Air Pollution’’ was held in Kaunas/Lithuania under the auspices of the International Union of Forest Research Organizations (IUFRO), represented by the Working Group 7.01.00 (chaired by Andrzej Bytnerowicz and Elena Paoletti) on ‘‘Impacts of Air Pollution and Climate Change on Forest Ecosystems.’’ Local organizers were Algirdas Augustaitis and Ingrida Augustaitiene from the Aleksandras Stulginskis University. More than 200 scientists from 34 countries gathered at the University Campus to share the current state of knowledge and discuss scientific gaps in the understanding of the concerted action of climate change and air pollution on forest ecosystems and their responsiveness (Augustaitis et al. 2014). A number of publications were selected for this Special Topic, which originated from presentations relating to ‘‘Mechanisms of Action and Indicator Development’’—being the title of one of the sessions and also of Research Group 7.01.02 chaired by the three first authors of this editorial. In the following, an overview will briefly be presented on the scope of the conference and the focus of the selected publications. The long-standing commitment of IUFRO Working Group 7.01.00 is to foster international cooperation between scientists, policy makers and governmental institutions based on conferences that are to share the current state of knowledge on climate change and air pollution effects on forest trees and ecosystems. This implies clarification of underlying mechanisms and harmonization of strategies for risk mitigation. Air pollution has attained attention as a stress component which is intrinsically woven with the phenomena of climate and global change, recognizing extensive forest burning, in particular, as a means of land-use change (Matyssek et al. 2014). On such grounds, the need and significance at the forest tree and ecosystem scale have become evident for long-term ecological research on the main challenge in understanding, which is the process-based, cause–effect-related clarification of system responsiveness to a changing and polluted environment, comprising capacities for risk mitigation through mechanisms of stress acclimation and adaptation. This challenge requires the exploration of scenarios that integrate biotic interactions, e.g., such of competition and diseases as well as belowground agents as modifiers of climate change and air pollution effects. Indispensible, in addition, is the initiation of comprehensive systems biology that needs to extend beyond the molecular level of metabolic control toward the integration of the (eco-)physiological process level. This means that an ‘‘ecosystems biology’’ is required for establishing mechanistic understanding of nonlinearities and emergent synergies in system behavior (Matyssek et al. 2012a). It was concluded that at the present stage, the step needs to be taken from filling gaps in evidence toward reaching integration of knowledge across spatio-temporal scales. R. Matyssek (&) Ecophysiology of Plants, Technische Universitat Munchen, Freising, Weihenstephan, Germany e-mail: matyssek@wzw.tum.de