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Concept
Forest dieback
Summary
Forest dieback (also "Waldsterben", a German loan word) is a condition in trees or woody plants in which peripheral parts are killed, either by pathogens, parasites or conditions like acid rain, drought, and more. These episodes can have disastrous consequences such as reduced resiliency of the ecosystem, disappearing important symbiotic relationships and thresholds. Some tipping points for major climate change forecast in the next century are directly related to forest diebacks.
Forest dieback refers to the phenomenon of a stand of trees losing health and dying without an obvious cause. This condition is also known as forest decline, forest damage, canopy level dieback, and stand level dieback. This usually affects individual species of trees, but can also affect multiple species. Dieback is an episodic event and may take on many locations and shapes. It can be along the perimeter, at specific elevations, or dispersed throughout the forest ecosystem.
Forest dieback presents itself in many ways: falling off of leaves and needles, discolouration of leaves and needles, thinning of the crowns of trees, dead stands of trees of a certain age, and changes in the roots of the trees. It also has many dynamic forms. A stand of trees can exhibit mild symptoms, extreme symptoms, or even death. Forest decline can be viewed as the result of continued, widespread, and severe dieback of multiple species in a forest. Current forest decline can be defined by: rapid development on individual trees, occurrence in different forest types, occurrence over a long duration (over 10 years), and occurrence throughout the natural range of affected species.
A lot of research was done in the 1980s when a severe dieback occurred in Germany and the Northeast United States. Previous diebacks were regionally limited, however, starting at the end of the 1970s, a decline took over the forests in Central Europe and parts of North America. The forest damage in Germany, specifically, was different as the decline was severe: the damage was widespread across various tree species.
Official source
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