Forest Products Industry

The extraordinary height of the world’s tallest tropical trees does not make them more vulnerable to drought than smaller trees, a new study has revealed. Source: Timberbiz The research overturns a widely held and untested scientific belief that the higher a tree grows, the harder it becomes to move water from the soil to its leaves – potentially increasing its vulnerability to drought stress. The international team, led by researchers at Cardiff University and the University of Exeter, studied five species of dipterocarps in the rainforests of Malaysian Borneo, observing how the trees adapted their woody anatomies as they grew to ensure a regulated water supply from root to leaf. Their findings, published in the Journal Science, reveal the tallest rainforest trees suffer no more than smaller trees during drought events, challenging decades of ecological theory which the team says must now be re-evaluated. Understanding tall trees is vital, because the tallest 1% store more than half of above-ground carbon in forests. These trees are therefore rare and play an important role in the planet’s rainforests capacity to combat climate change by storing and absorbing carbon. “As a tree becomes taller, keeping its leaves hydrated becomes more challenging. Existing predictions suggest an impaired hydraulic system places them at higher risk of dying due to drought. That prediction is included in some models of climate-change impacts, and our study suggests this may not be correct,” said lead author Dr Paulo Bittencourt from Cardiff University’s School of Earth and Environmental Sciences. Reaching heights of up to 100 metres tall, Dipterocarps dominate the rainforests of southeast Asia, storing vast amounts of carbon and helping to protect and shape their surrounding ecosystems. The researchers witnessed how these colossal trees protected themselves against the effects of drought by widening their internal water carrying vessels and adjusting their leaf physiology. “Trees contain lots of thin, hollow vessels and like drinking through a straw they draw water upwards by creating low pressure at the top,” said the study’s co-author Professor Lucy Rowland from the University of Exeter. “Unlike drinking straws, these vessels have evolved intricate adaptations that can maintain the water in liquid form, even under the extreme low pressures required to move it above 10 metres. “However, a widely accepted theory suggests that in tall trees, the sheer length of vessels and the effects of gravity limit water transport, photosynthesis and growth. “Our results challenge this by showing that the hydraulic systems of very tall Dipterocarp trees are perfectly evolved for their height and should not suffer more than small Dipterocarp trees exposed to the same drought conditions.” The researchers examined Dipterocarp trees ranging from 7 to 71 metres tall in Malaysian Borneo and measured a variety of characteristics at multiple positions along each tree. They found taller trees compensate for their height in various ways, including water-carrying vessels that grow wider nearer the ground and leaves which have adapted to withstand greater water stress before wilting. They also measured trunk growth rates before, during and after the strong El Niño drought period of 2023-2024. “As a Malaysian researcher co-authoring this study, showing that even the tallest of these trees are hydraulically resilient to drought is a finding I hope will strengthen the case for protecting these forests under a changing climate,” said co-author Palasiah Jotan, a Malaysian PhD student studying in The Czech University of Life Sciences. The research team included Sabah Forestry Department (Malaysia), the UK Centre for Ecology & Hydrology and the University of Aberdeen, as well as institutions from the Czech Republic, Spain, Brazil and the USA. More research is now needed to investigate the hydraulic systems and drought resilience of other tall trees and so we are expanding this work to test its generality across the tropics, repeating, for example, in the giant Amazon trees.

The post Tall trees have evolved to pump water to the top appeared first on Timberbiz.

Over the centuries, Europe’s forests have been optimised for timber production. The result is often very orderly, uniform stands lacking old, decaying trees or natural clearings. This monotony can pose a problem for biodiversity. Source: Timberbiz Researchers from the Biocentre at Julius-Maximilians-Universität Würzburg (JMU) in Bavaria, Germany, together with researchers from the Universities of Marburg and Munich and the Bavarian Forest National Park, have now investigated in the BETA FOR project how targeted interventions to restore a more varied forest structure affect the diversity of bats and birds. The results have been published in the journal Current Biology. The team led by forest ecologist Professor Jörg Müller shows that when humans create gaps in the forest canopy and leave deadwood lying on the forest floor, this increases the diversity of both species groups at the forest landscape level. However, birds and bats react differently to changes in their habitat. Birds behave like homebodies: they occupy fixed territories if they find everything they need there – from nesting sites to food. They benefit when their established forest area has a structure that is as complex as possible, with deadwood and gaps. Bats, on the other hand, are like commuters: in a single night they cover long distances, visiting various ‘specialist shops’ along the way. Sometimes they hunt insects in a dark, dense corner of the forest; at other times they use light-filled gaps as entry corridors. For them, it is important that the individual sections of forest differ spatially from one another. Which species appeared The Würzburg study shows how diversity increases through gaps in the canopy and deadwood. In the case of bats, an average of two new species were found in more disordered forests. “That sounds like a small number, but it is actually significant because there are only 25 bat species in Germany in total,” says PhD student Clara Wild, the study’s first author. The more structurally diverse forests attracted species such as the northern bat or the parti-coloured bat, for example. Both otherwise prefer open terrain and are rather rare in dense, uniform forests. Birds benefited particularly strongly from local interventions, such as artificially created forest gaps with deadwood. In their case, it was primarily so-called functional diversity that increased – that is, species with very distinct lifestyles were added – such as deadwood specialists like various endangered woodpecker species. The researchers conducted the study in six regions in Germany: near Lübeck, in the Saarland, in the University of Würzburg’s forest, near Passau, in the Hunsrück-Hochwald National Park and in the Bavarian Forest National Park. In total, they studied 234 precisely defined forest plots measuring 50 by 50 metres. There, they deliberately manipulated the forest to create more diverse structures: in some areas they created gaps in the canopy, in others they placed deadwood such as tree stumps or fallen trunks. They then studied how species diversity changed over the following four to seven years. To find out which animals live in the forest plots, the researchers used acoustic monitoring. At times when the animals are most active, recorders captured their calls or songs. These invisible spies monitored the forest over a three-month period without the animals being disturbed by human presence. In this way, the research team identified a total of 17 bat and 72 bird species. “Our results show that we can promote biodiversity even in previous monotonous, species-poor forests,” explains Clara Wild. “Through small interventions that increase structural diversity, we can create valuable niches. This makes the forest more diverse and attracts pest controllers such as birds and bats alike.” The new findings provide further guidance for the forestry sector. “A structurally rich forest is much more resilient to climate change thanks to its diversity,” says Jörg Müller. For forestry operations, this means having the courage to leave gaps. “Leaving deadwood in the forest may cost some timber yield in the short term, but it ensures the long-term stability of the entire ecosystem.” Publication: Restoring structural complexity in temperate forests increases bat and bird diversity. Current Biology, 20 May 2026, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cub.2026.04.058

The post Disorder brings more life to the forest appeared first on Timberbiz.

Wildfires in recent years have ravaged millions of hectares of forest land, destroyed thousands of homes and claimed hundreds of victims. Globally, nearly all of the worst years for forest fires on record have occurred since 2020. Source: Timberbiz And fires are now the largest driver of forest loss around the world. Urgent and coordinated action is required to prevent further devastation, but with a number of factors fuelling the intensity of the fires – including climate change impacts and human activity – there is no one easy answer. But here’s what we do know: responsible forest management helps mitigate fire risks and protects communities and ecosystems from wildfires’ devastating impacts. FSC’s core principles require that forest managers assess risks related to natural hazards, including wildfires, and that they implement activities that help mitigate those risks. In practice, these activities may look different in each country, depending on the environmental conditions, risks and characteristics of each region. FSC’s national forest stewardship standards for different countries account for these differences. For example, in northern Spain, where the Devesa da Rogueira became the country’s first forest to receive FSC certification in 2020, community members who managed the forest regularly cleared vegetation that could fuel fires. Two years later, a large wildfire scorched more than 11,000 hectares in the area but left the Devesa da Rogueira forest largely untouched. In Guatemala, communities have invested in patrolling the boundaries of FSC-certified concessions, build and maintain fire gaps and consistently monitor the area through GPS technology and the use of drones. A 2018 study found the managed forest lands had practically no fire incidents over the span of a decade. Portugal’s 2017 wildfires, which scorched through more than 500,000 hectares and killed more than 120 people, also highlighted the critical need for enhanced forest management activities and led to a variety of management initiatives since then. In FSC-certified forests there, managers have for years proactively worked on responsible forest management, implementing actions to increase fire resistance and ecosystem resilience, including by controlling invasive species and promoting the regeneration of native species. Forest management practices around the world that can help prevent fires can also include procedures such as controlling visitor activities, removing trash, creating space that firefighters can use in the event of a rapid fire, and maintaining buffer zones between public roads. Across the world, FSC certification means that forests are managed in ways that protect ecosystems and enhance forest resilience – because healthier forests not only help reduce the risks of high-severity wildfires but also allow for ecosystems’ faster recovery.

The post Responsible forestry as a risk mitigation tool appeared first on Timberbiz.