Towards a global understanding of tree mortality

Abstract

Rates of tree mortality are increasing globally, with implications for forests and climate. Yet how and why these trends vary globally remains unknown. Developing a comprehensive assessment of global tree mortality will require systematically integrating data from ground-based long-term forest monitoring with large-scale remote sensing. We survey the metadata from 466,865 forest monitoring plots across 89 countries and five continents using questionnaires and discuss the potential to use these to estimate tree mortality trends globally. Our survey shows that the area monitored has increased steadily since 1960, but we also identify many regions with limited ground-based information on tree mortality. The integration of existing ground-based forest inventories with remote sensing and modelling can potentially fill those gaps, but this requires development of technical solutions and agreements that enable seamless flows of information from the field to global assessments of tree mortality. A truly global monitoring effort should promote fair and equitable collaborations, transferring funding to and empowering scientists from less wealthy regions. Increasing interest in forests as a natural climate solution, the advancement of new technologies, and world-wide connectivity means that now a global monitoring system of tree mortality is not just urgently needed, but also possible.