Silent suffering of trees during the 2018 heatwave

The DenDrought2018 initiative – A team effort to understand the impact of the 2018 heatwave on trees growing across Central and Atlantic Europe – just published a paper in Nature Communications.  More specifically, effects of the record-breaking 2018 European heatwave on tree growth and tree water status were investigated using a collection of high-temporal resolution dendrometer data from sites throughout Europe. The paper -surprisingly- concludes that the 2018 heatwave led to stem dehydration but not to consistent growth reductions in forests. This finding is explained by the timing of the heatwave, which was quite late in the season. It, however, does not mean that trees did not suffer from temporary stress! The inability of trees to refill stem-water reservoirs during the night namely suggests limited resilience to heatwaves and droughts. Ernst van der Maaten is one of the core members of DenDrought2018.