Forest inventory data from Finland and Sweden for: Demographic performance of European tree species at their hot and cold climatic edges, plus ancillary climate data

Then we predicted growth, survival, lifespan, and passage time at the hot and dry or cold and wet edges and compared them to their values at the species climatic centre to derive indices of demographic response at the edge. Using these indices, we investigated whether differences in species demographic response between hot and cold edges could be explained by their position along the climate gradient and functional traits related to their climate stress tolerance. 3.

We found that at cold and wet edges of European tree species, growth and passage time were constrained, whereas at their hot and dry edges, survival and lifespan were constrained. Demographic constraints at the edge were stronger for species occurring in extreme conditions, i.e. in hot edges of hot-distributed species and cold edges of cold-distributed species. Species leaf nitrogen content was strongly linked to their demographic responses at the edge.

In contrast, we found only weak links with wood density, leaf size, and xylem vulnerability to embolism. 4. Synthesis. Our study presents a more complicated picture than previously thought with demographic responses that differ between hot and cold edges.

Predictions of climate change impacts should be refined to include edge and species characteristics. | The data provided have blurred geographic coordinates (random number up to 0.02 degree). When opening the datafiles in Excel be aware that the Swedish plot codes are numeric and Excel can round the numbers. When determining natural mortality only trees with the tree status 4 (dead and stem present) should be considered as dying due to natural mortality.

Metadata Three datafiles are provided here: trees_finland_and_sweden.csv Tree information from the Finnish and Swedish National Forest Inventories. Field Description treecode Unique tree code in the plot plotcode Plot code treestatus The status of the tree: 1 – ingrowth (tree not present in the first survey) 2 – survivor 3 – dead (harvested) 4 – dead (stem present) 5 – dead (stem absent)

Note

Only id 4 can be considered as natural mortality as we don t know the reason for the death of id 5 trees dbh1 Diameter at breast height (DBH) first survey in mm dbh2 Diameter at breast height (DBH) second survey in mm weight1 Plot radius in first survey in metres weight2 Plot radius in second survey in metres country Finland Sweden plots_finland_and_sweden.csv Plot information from the Finnish and Swedish National Forest Inventories.

Field Description plotcode Plot code country Finland Sweden surveydate1 Date of the first survey surveydate2 Date of the second survey longitude_generalised Decimal longitude blurred by up to 0.02 degree latitude_generalised Decimal latitude blurred by up to 0.02 degree management2 Finnish plots: number of years after management was recorded in the plot in the second survey Swedish plots: Was their evidence of management in the plot in the second survey climate_wai_sgdd.csv Climate variables for all the plots in Kunstler et al (2020).

Field Description plotcode Plot unique ID country Finland Sweden France Germany Spain wai Water availability index. wai was computed using precipitation (P, extracted from E-OBS, Moreno & Hasenauer, 2016) and potential evapotranspiration (PET) from the Climatic Research Unit (Harris, Jones, Osborn, & Lister, 2014) data-set, as (P − PET)/PET. sgdd Sum of growing degree days above 5.5 °C. Daily temperature was extracted from E-OBS, a high resolution (1 km2) downscaled climate data-set (Moreno & Hasenauer, 2016) for the years between the two surveys plus two years before the first survey.

Funding provided by: Agence Nationale de la RechercheCrossref Funder Registry ID: dx.doi.org/10.13039/501100001665Award Number: ANR-16-SUMF-0002 Funding provided by: FP7*Crossref Funder Registry ID: Award Number: 265171 Funding provided by: FP7Crossref Funder Registry ID: Award Number: 265171