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Research article2023Peer reviewedOpen access

Different triggers, different stories: Bark-beetle infestation patterns after storm and drought-induced outbreaks

Karvemo, S.; Huo, L.; Ohrn, P.; Lindberg, E.; Persson, H. J.

Abstract

In the recent decades, Norway spruce forests (Picea abies Karst.) in Europe have been subject to large-scale tree mortality caused by the spruce bark beetle (Ips typographus L.). The outbreaks were induced by storm-felling events and periods of drought, which are becoming increasingly frequent due to climate change. Because storms and droughts spatially affect forests differently, the infestation patterns and configuration of the bark beetles might differ between storms and drought. In this study, we examined local and landscape factors associated with bark beetle-caused tree mortality after one storm (2005) and one drought-induced spruce bark beetle outbreak (2018), both occurring in southern Sweden. A total of 13,192 infested one-ha pixels after the storm and 6,425 one-ha pixels after the drought (in total 19,617) were compared regarding differences in infestation occurrence and size and associated forest structures and climate between the two different outbreaks, using a generalized linear model (GLM) approach. Based on our findings, we discovered that the allocation of infestation patch sizes (including four classes: 5-10, 11-25, 26-50 and >50 infested trees) for the two outbreaks were quite similar with a large proportion (>0.6) of small groups (& LE;10 trees). However, the outcomes from this study demonstrate that the drivers behind the spatial configuration of bark beetle infestations can differ considerably between outbreaks triggered by storms and droughts, and the main cause seems to be linked to the spatial distribution of susceptible trees. The most consistent differences for both occurrence and infestation size were that storm-induced infestations increased more with spruce volumes and area of protected forests (nature reserves) in the landscape; whereas for the drought-induced infestations, occurrence and size increased more with clear-cuts in the landscape and spruce heights across spatial scales. Soil moisture and mean drought index (SPEI; May-July) were important for both outbreaks, but generally more important for the infestation sizes after droughts than after storms and may involve a time-lagged effect. The reasoning behind the differences between storms and droughts may be that during storm-induced outbreaks, when the wind-felled trees are removed or not suitable anymore, bark beetles need to find specific susceptible standing trees, while after drought all trees are more or less stressed, which results in a selection of large trees in dry and warm landscapes as they have more resources and favorable reproduction conditions. Finally, we show that the previous infestation size influenced the later infestation size negatively within landscapes of 25 ha and this seems to be related to depletion of susceptible host trees. These results are important for the assessment of more specific outbreak predictions, which should be integrated in future risk mapping of bark beetle outbreaks.

Published in

Forest Ecology and Management
2023, Volume: 545, article number: 121255
Publisher: ELSEVIER