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Het vergroenen kan steden goed helpen om een scala aan uitdagingen, zoals klimaatverandering, biodiversiteitsverlies en leefbaarheid, op te pakken. In veel Nederlandse steden is de nettotrend echter negatief. Dit artikel geeft aan hoe dat komt en wat daaraan te doen is.

As climate change intensifies, the fate of many of the world’s forests is becoming a major concern. Meanwhile, the European Union (EU) member states have committed to the goal of becoming the first climate-neutral continent by 2050, which will involve the planting of 3 billion additional trees by 2030. This challenge can only be met by robust and efficient management and conservation strategies, based on intense sharing of knowledge and tools among experts, practitioners and policymakers. The B4EST International Conference ‘Managing Forest Genetic Resources (FGR) for an Uncertain Future’, held on 20–23 June 2022 in Lisbon (Portugal), brought together stakeholders from the public and private sectors, researchers and policymakers to explore issues around implementation of sustainable management and conservation of European forests. The conference illustrated the promise of genomic technologies for supporting the tree breeding sector, how Forest Genetic Resources (FGR) and Forest Reproductive Material (FRM) could be optimally deployed and play a key role in building climate resilient forests, and the role experts play in the present context of uncertain climate and societal changes., We acknowledge the support of the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement No 773383 (B4EST).

De extreme droogte en hitte van 2018 en 2019 hebben een grooteffect gehad op de groei en de vitaliteit van veel boomsoorten.Pas in 2021 was in veel gebieden het watertekort voorbij. Hoehebben bomen op de extreme jaren gereageerd? Zijn er verschillenin groeireacties tussen soorten, ook in vergelijking met eerderedroogtejaren? Het DendroLab van Wageningen University & Research(WUR) onderzoekt aan jaarringen hoe bomen in proefvelden van hetCentrum voor Genetisch Bronnen Nederland (CGN) reageren.

Op de hogere zandgronden treedt verminderde vitaliteit en sterfte van eikenbomen op, vooral door verzuring en vermesting. Toediening van steenmeel zou kunnen helpen tegen de nadelige effecten van verzuring. Daarom zijn in 2016 in Het Nationale Park De Hoge Veluwe en in het Mastbos (Breda) experimenten gestart met steenmeeltoediening. Na zes jaar onderzoek beschrijven we de belangrijkste effecten op de bodemchemie en het bodemleven, en de betekenis voor het beheer. Met name is gekeken naar pH, basenverzadiging en nutriënten in relatie tot fijne wortels van eikenbomen, micro-organismen en bodemfauna waaronder mycorrhizaschimmels en schimmeletende microarthropoden. Bovendien werden de effecten van fosfortoediening en de toediening van bodemfauna met strooisel van donorlocaties onderzocht.

Op het beperkte grondgebied van Nederland komen steeds meer complexe opgaven samen. Mogelijke oplossingen hebben vaak gevolgen voor meerdere partijen. Bij het zoeken naar passende oplossingen moet beleid rekening houden met de veelheid van randvoorwaarden: ecologische, sociaaleconomische en bestuurlijke. Maar hoe krijg je inzicht in de verweving van die veelheid aan factoren? Hoe kun je de complexiteit hanteerbaar maken? Wij komen in dit artikel met een voorstel voor een dergelijke methodiek en illustreren dat aan de hand van het vraagstuk rond de adoptie van natuurinclusieve landbouw.

Is de veerkracht van onze bomen en bossen toereikend om hetere endrogere periodes en aanhoudende bodemverzuring in de toekomst teoverleven? Welke bosbeheermaatregelen zijn mogelijk en nodig om deverschillende bosfuncties te behouden? Om deze vragen te beantwoordenen de gevolgen van klimaatverandering en bodemverzuring in kaart tebrengen zijn wij – een consortium van wetenschappers en bosgebruikers –een bosexperiment gestart. Het doel is om de reacties van bomen, bodemsen uiteindelijke hele bossen op verschillende beheeringrepen te begrijpenin relatie tot veranderingen in bodem en klimaat. Dit artikel geeft eenintroductie van het experiment.

Het Drouwenerzand is een klassiek heide- en stuifzandlandschap met veel reliëf, overgangen tussen tal van karakteristieke begroeiingen en vredig grazende Drentse heideschapen. Een schilderachtig decor waaruit toch steeds meer ‘bewoners’ vertrekken. Eens was het een bolwerk van typische dagvlinders van dit landschap, maar inmiddels zijn die verdwenen. Is de natuur hier nog even mooi als eerst, nu het er leger en stiller wordt? En zijn er nog herstelopties?

Heatwaves exert disproportionately strong and sometimes irreversible impacts on forest ecosystems. These impacts remain poorly understood at the tree and species level and across large spatial scales. Here, we investigate the effects of the record-breaking 2018 European heatwave on tree growth and tree water status using a collection of high-temporal resolution dendrometer data from 21 species across 53 sites. Relative to the two preceding years, annual stem growth was not consistently reduced by the 2018 heatwave but stems experienced twice the temporary shrinkage due to depletion of water reserves. Conifer species were less capable of rehydrating overnight than broadleaves across gradients of soil and atmospheric drought, suggesting less resilience toward transient stress. In particular, Norway spruce and Scots pine experienced extensive stem dehydration. Our high-resolution dendrometer network was suitable to disentangle the effects of a severe heatwave on tree growth and desiccation at large-spatial scales in situ, and provided insights on which species may be more vulnerable to climate extremes., This work utilised the network of dendrometer observations established by the COST Action network STReESS (grant FP1106). We acknowledge the involved networks TreeNet, Swiss Long-term Forest Ecosystem Research Programme LWF, French National Network for Long-term FOrest ECOsystem Monitoring RENECOFOR, the German Long Term Ecosystem Research Network LTER-D, the Italian Long Term Ecosystem Research Network ILTER, the Integrated Carbon Observation System ICOS and Tree-Watch.net. R.L.S. acknowledges funding from the Special Research Fund (BOF) of Ghent University for Postdoctoral Fellowships and the Spanish Ministry of Science, Innovation, and Universities (Juan de la Cierva Programme, grant IJC2018-036123-I). R.L.P., R.Z., P.F., and G.v.A. acknowledge funding from the Federal Office for the Environment FOEN (00.0365.PZ I 0427-0562, 09.0064.PJ/R301-0223; project treenet.info) and the Swiss National Science Foundation SNF (20FI21_148992, 20FI_173691, P2BSP3_184475; project LOTFOR 150205 and Grant 20FI20_173691; project ICOS-CH). J.M.V. and M.M. acknowledge funding from the Spanish MINECO via competitive grants CGL2013-46808-R and CGL2017-89149-C2-1-R. R.P. acknowledges funding from the grant RTI2018-095297-J-I00 (Spain) and by a Humboldt Research Fellowship for Experienced Researchers (Germany).

Aim: Theoretical, experimental and observational studies have shown that biodiversity–ecosystem functioning (BEF) relationships are influenced by functional community structure through two mutually non-exclusive mechanisms: (1) the dominance effect (which relates to the traits of the dominant species); and (2) the niche partitioning effect [which relates to functional diversity (FD)]. Although both mechanisms have been studied in plant communities and experiments at small spatial extents, it remains unclear whether evidence from small-extent case studies translates into a generalizable macroecological pattern. Here, we evaluate dominance and niche partitioning effects simultaneously in grassland systems world-wide.Location: Two thousand nine hundred and forty-one grassland plots globally.Time period: 2000–2014.Major taxa studied: Vascular plants.Methods: We obtained plot-based data on functional community structure from the global vegetation plot database “sPlot”, which combines species composition with plant trait data from the “TRY” database. We used data on the community-weighted mean (CWM) and FD for 18 ecologically relevant plant traits. As an indicator of primary productivity, we extracted the satellite-derived normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI) from MODIS. Using generalized additive models and deviation partitioning, we estimated the contributions of trait CWM and FD to the variation in annual maximum NDVI, while controlling for climatic variables and spatial structure.Results: Grassland communities dominated by relatively tall species with acquisitive traits had higher NDVI values, suggesting the prevalence of dominance effects for BEF relationships. We found no support for niche partitioning for the functional traits analysed, because NDVI remained unaffected by FD. Most of the predictive power of traits was shared by climatic predictors and spatial coordinates. This highlights the importance of community assembly processes for BEF relationships in natural communities.Main conclusions: Our analysis provides empirical evidence that plant functional community structure and global patterns in primary productivity are linked through the resource economics and size traits of the dominant species. This is an important test of the hypotheses underlying BEF relationships at the global scale.

Klimaatverandering is een grote uitdaging geworden op internationaal, Europees, nationaal en regionaal niveau. De gevolgen van klimaatverandering moeten worden beperkt door het voorkomen en verminderen van de uitstoot van broeikasgassen (BKG) in de atmosfeer. Er zijn verschillende beleids- en boekhoudkundige kaders ontwikkeld om dit te bewerkstelligen. Deze kaders stellen specifieke doelstellingen voor reductie van emissies van broeikasgassen of verhoogde vastlegging van CO2 vast en bieden een gestructureerde aanpak om dit probleem op te lossen. Dit rapport heeft tot doel om beleidsmedewerkers van het Nederlandse ministerie van Landbouw, Natuur en Voedselkwaliteit (LNV) te informeren over hoe een verhoging van het aanbod aan biomassa uit bosbouw en landbouw voor de productie van chemische stoffen en materialen binnen deze kaders worden meegenomen en meegewogen en kunnen worden ingezet voor het beperken van klimaatverandering een verhoging van het aanbod aan biomassa uit bosbouw en landbouw omvatten voor de productie van chemische stoffen en materialen die kunnen bijdragen aan vermindering van de uitstoot van broeikasgassen. Dit desktoponderzoek volgt een 'systeemperspectiefbenadering' om de rol die biobased materialen1 kunnen spelen bij het verminderen van de uitstoot van broeikasgassen te bestuderen. Deze benadering biedt inzicht in de verbanden tussen biobased producten, nationale broeikasgasinventarissen en wereldwijde afspraken. Begrip van deze verbanden en kennis over welke boekhoudmethoden voor broeikasgasemissies en -verwijderingen worden toegepast is noodzakelijk voor het identificeren van mogelijke nadelen en voor het ontwikkelen van toekomstige beleidsrichtlijnen. Na deze review concluderen we dat het belangrijk is om bekend te zijn met en de waarde te erkennen in de huidige bestaande boekhoudmethoden. De bestaande kaders missen echter nog belangrijke kenmerken die robuustere boekhoudmethoden voor koolstofvastlegging en -opslag in biobased materialen mogelijk zouden kunnen maken. Op dit moment werkt de Europese Commissie aan voorstellen zoals het "Carbon Farming framework" en het "Carbon Removal Certification Framework" (december 2022) en de invoering van een "Carbon Storage Products Pool". Deze voorstellen zouden een belangrijke rol kunnen spelen bij het opzetten van duidelijke boekhoudregels die de productie van biomassa koppelen aan biobased materialen en de bijdrage daarvan aan nationaal beleid ter ondersteuning van broeikasgasreductiedoelstellingen waarderen. Dit vereist samenwerking en informatie-uitwisseling tussen de Europese landen. Daarom is het belangrijk om de ontwikkeling van deze kaders en de daarin voorgestelde boekhoudregels nauwgezet te volgen.

The EU Biodiversity strategy aims to plant 3 billion trees by 2030, in order to improve ecosystem restoration and biodiversity. Here, we compute the land area that would be required to support this number of newly planted trees by taking account of different tree species and planting regimes across the EU member states. We find that 3 billion trees would require a total land area of between 0.81 and 1.37 Mha (avg. 1.02 Mha). The historic forest expansion in the EU since 2010 was 2.44 Mha, meaning that despite 3 billion trees sounding like a large number this target is considerably lower than historic afforestation rates within the EU, i.e. only 40% of the past trend. Abandoned agricultural land is often proposed as providing capacity for afforestation. We estimate agricultural abandoned land areas from the HIstoric Land Dynamics Assessment+ database using two time thresholds (abandonment since 2009 or 2014) to identify potential areas for tree planting. The area of agricultural abandoned land was 2.6 Mha (potentially accommodating 7.2 billion trees) since 2009 and 0.2 Mha (potentially accommodating 741 million trees) since 2014. Our study highlights that sufficient space could be available to meet the 3 billion tree planting target from abandoned land. However, large-scale afforestation beyond abandoned land could have displacement effects elsewhere in the world because of the embodied deforestation in the import of agricultural crops and livestock. This would negate the expected benefits of EU afforestation. Hence, the EU’s relatively low ambition on tree planting may actually be better in terms of avoiding such displacement effects. We suggest that tree planting targets should be set at a level that considers physical ecosystem dynamics as well as socio-economic conditions.

This study investigates the association between having a domestic garden or not and the amount of greenery in this garden, and the prevalence of several types of diseases and disorders, as known by one’s general practitioner. Data on garden ownership and the amount of garden greenery, as well as on health, are available for about 800,000 people, all living within city limits. In the statistical analyses, the associations are corrected for, among other things, the socioeconomic status of the individual and its neighbourhood, but also for the local air quality and noise exposure. The results show that for a large number of diseases and disorders having a garden, and especially having more greenery in that garden, is associated with a lower prevalence.

This deliverable contains the 12 demonstrator area restoration workplans. The restoration workplans describe restoration sites, restoration goals and restoration activities for each demo area. The restoration measures will be integrated into the forest and landscape as much as possible. Additionally, the connections with other WPs such as WP2 – Stakeholders engagement and WP6 – Biodiversity monitoring are made within these restoration workplans.These workplans serve as a handbook, now for the demos themselves and later on for others who also work on the forest restoration. This deliverable includes the restoration workplans for the following demonstrator areas: Po Valley (Italy), southern Netherlands, North Moravia(Czech Republic), North Rhine Westphalia (Germany), Vindelälven-Juhttátahkka BiosphereReserve (Sweden), Queen Elizabeth Forest Park (Scotland), Biosphere Reserve BačkoPodunavlje (Croatia/Serbia cross-border), Făgăraș mountains (Romania), Thy andNordsjælland (Denmark), Castilla y Leon (Spain), Nouvelle-Aquitaine (France) and coppiceforests in Serbia.

Northern peatlands store globally-important amounts of carbon in the form of partly decomposed plant detritus. Drying associated with climate and land-use change may lead to increased fire frequency and severity in peatlands and the rapid loss of carbon to the atmosphere. However, our understanding of the patterns and drivers of peatland burning on an appropriate decadal to millennial timescale relies heavily on individual site-based reconstructions. For the first time, we synthesise peatland macrocharcoal re-cords from across North America, Europe, and Patagonia to reveal regional variation in peatland burning during the Holocene. We used an existing database of proximal sedimentary charcoal to represent regional burning trends in the wider landscape for each region. Long-term trends in peatland burning appear to be largely climate driven, with human activities likely having an increasing influence in the late Holocene. Warmer conditions during the Holocene Thermal Maximum (similar to 9e6 cal. ka BP) were associated with greater peatland burning in North America's Atlantic coast, southern Scandinavia and the Baltics, and Patagonia. Since the Little Ice Age, peatland burning has declined across North America and in some areas of Europe. This decline is mirrored by a decrease in wider landscape burning in some, but not all sub-regions, linked to fire-suppression policies, and landscape fragmentation caused by agricultural expansion. Peatlands demonstrate lower susceptibility to burning than the wider landscape in several instances, probably because of autogenic processes that maintain high levels of near-surface wetness even during drought. Nonetheless, widespread drying and degradation of peatlands, particularly in Europe, has likely increased their vulnerability to burning in recent centuries. Consequently, peatland restoration efforts are important to mitigate the risk of peatland fire under a changing climate. Finally, we make recommendations for future research to improve our understanding of the controls on peatland fires.(c) 2023 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd. This is an open access article under the CC BY license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).

Climate change has become an important challenge at International, European, National and Regional level. Mitigation of climate change by preventing and reducing the emission of greenhouse gases (GHG) into the atmosphere is needed to make the impacts of climate change less severe. To ensure this, different mitigation frameworks have been created. These frameworks set specific GHG reduction goals and provide a more structured approach to solve this problem. This report aims to provide information to the Dutch Ministry of Agriculture, Nature and Food Quality (LNV) on and how some climate change mitigation frameworks are including the increase forestry and agricultural biomass supply to produce chemicals and materials that can contribute to the reduction of GHG emission. This desktop research follows a ‘systems perspective approach’ to study the role of biobased materials’ 1 in the reduction of GHG emission. This approach allows the understanding of interactions between biobased products, national inventories and global agreements. Understanding these links and having knowledge on which GHG gases accounting methods are being applied is necessary for the identification of possible drawbacks and for the development of future policy guidelines. After this review, we conclude that it is important to be familiar with and recognize the value in current existing accounting methodologies. However, existing frameworks are still lacking important features which could enable more robust account methodologies for carbon sequestration and storage in biobased materials. At this moment in time, the European Commission is working on proposals like the ‘Carbon Farming framework’ and ‘carbon removals certification framework’ (December 2022) and introducing a ‘carbon storage products pool’, these proposals could play and important role on establishing clear accounting rules that connect the biomass production to biobased materials and its contribution to support National Policies towards GHG reduction targets. This will require collaboration and information exchange between European countries. Therefore, is important to follow closely the evolution of these frameworks and their proposed accounting rules. This document is organized in the following way: • Section 2, introduces terminologies, frameworks and methods for GHG accounting at different levels International, Europe and Netherlands. • Section 3 is dedicated to understanding how biobased products for could contribute to the Climate targets by substituting other GHG intensive materials, extending the life span of the product or by cascading use of the biomass. • Section 4 shows two examples on how the GHG balances of two different linear biobased supply chains are estimated at the product accounting level and how this relates to the national level inventory reporting and the global agreements. • Section 5 presents our conclusions and recommendations.

Mining contributes importantly to tropical deforestation and land degradation. To mitigate these effects, mining companies are increasingly obliged to restore abandoned mine lands, but factors driving restoration success are hardly evaluated. Here, we investigate the influence of ecological factors (restoration age, soil properties and surrounding forest area) and management factors (diversity and density of planted species, mine zone) on the recovery rate of forest structure and tree diversity on 40 post-mining restoration areas in Southern Amazonia, Brazil, using a 9-year annual monitoring dataset consisting of over 25 000 trees. We found that recovery of forest structure was closely associated with interactions between soil quality and the planted tree communities, and that tree diversity recovery was positively associated with the amount of surrounding forests. We also observed that forest structure and diversity recover more slowly in mine tailings compared to pit surroundings. Our study confirms the complexity of mine land restoration but also reveals that planting design and soil improvement can increase restoration success. For resource-efficient mine restoration, we recommend the focusing of efforts on tailings, which are hardest to restore, and reducing efforts in pit surroundings and areas close to surrounding forest because of their potential for restoration by natural regeneration.This article is part of the theme issue ‘Understanding forest landscape restoration: reinforcing scientific foundations for the UN Decade on Ecosystem Restoration’.

This report shows the results of a sampling of sand and clay soils of forests. Samples were taken from litter layers (LF and H) and mineral layers (0-30 cm and 30-100 cm deep). The soil profiles have been described for the sandy soils. The results have been compared with a sampling carried out in 1990.

Climate change has caused the soil temperature of the upper 100 cm to increase by an average of 1.5 ̊C over the past forty years and will continue to increase by 1.2°C over the next thirty years. The rate of increase is strongly determined by vegetation. For example, bare soil will warm much faster and more strongly than grass-covered soil. Thus, nature developers can influence soil temperature through vegetation, but the type of measure on will define the effect. An integrated understanding of temperature and water dynamics in the soil-crop-atmosphere system is urgently needed to better understand the risks of soil temperature elevation and to appropriately adapt cropping and nature development systems to these integrated climate effects.

This report provides a complete methodological description and background information of the Dutch National System for Greenhouse gas reporting of the LULUCF sector. It provides detailed description of the methodologies, activity data and emission factors that were used. Each of the reporting categories Forest Land, Cropland, Grassland, Wetlands, Settlements, Other Land and Harvested Wood Products are described in a separate chapter.

[Abstract] Here we provide the ‘Global Spectrum of Plant Form and Function Dataset’, containing species mean values for six vascular plant traits. Together, these traits –plant height, stem specific density, leaf area, leaf mass per area, leaf nitrogen content per dry mass, and diaspore (seed or spore) mass – define the primary axes of variation in plant form and function. The dataset is based on ca. 1 million trait records received via the TRY database (representing ca. 2,500 original publications) and additional unpublished data. It provides 92,159 species mean values for the six traits, covering 46,047 species. The data are complemented by higher-level taxonomic classification and six categorical traits (woodiness, growth form, succulence, adaptation to terrestrial or aquatic habitats, nutrition type and leaf type). Data quality management is based on a probabilistic approach combined with comprehensive validation against expert knowledge and external information. Intense data acquisition and thorough quality control produced the largest and, to our knowledge, most accurate compilation of empirically observed vascular plant species mean traits to date. The study has been supported by the TRY initiative on plant traits (https://www.try-db.org). TRY is an initiative of the Max Planck Institute for Biogeochemistry, bioDISCOVERY/Future Earth (ICSU), the German Centre for Integrative Biodiversity Research (iDiv) Halle-Jena-Leipzig and Núcleo DiverSus (CONICET- Universidad Nacional de Córdoba, Argentina). The Global Spectrum of Plant Form and Function study has been supported by the European BACI project (Towards a Biosphere Atmosphere change Index, EU grant ID 640176), and grants to SD by FONCyT, CONICET, Universidad Nacional de Córdoba, the Inter-American Institute for Global Change Research, and The Newton Fund (NERC UK – CONICET ARG). VO thanks RSF (#19-14-00038p). Open Access funding enabled and organized by Projekt DEAL

Ash dieback caused by the invasive fungus Hymenoscyphus fraxineus leads to massive mortality among common ash (Fraxinus excelsior) in Europe. To select tolerant genotypes, inoculation experiments are frequently conducted with isolates of the fungus. The aim of this study was to improve the inoculation methodology for evaluating susceptibility of ash genotypes to ash dieback through (i) testing the virulence of different isolates of Hymenoscyphus fraxineus and (ii) investigating temporal lesion development using three widely applied cultivars: Altena, Atlas and Westhof's Glorie. First, an experiment was conducted with a repeated measure design in which virulence of five different isolates was tested. Second, a subset of two isolates that induced the longest downward lesion length in experiment one was used in combination with a slightly adjusted inoculum protocol. Significant differences were found between isolates for downward lesion length, but a significant interaction effect of isolates and cultivars was absent. Also, the inoculation position within the stem affected lesion length; the largest lesions were found on the highest inoculation position within the stem. Furthermore, we found that cryopreserved isolates can remain virulent over years. The timing of inoculation at the end of the growing season was effective as large lesions already occurred during winter dormancy. For future inoculation studies, we propose to use: (i) isolates that induce large lesions, as less virulent isolates induced not only shorter but also fewer lesions; (ii) a similar inoculation position to better compare inoculations within and between experiments; (iii) cryopreserved isolates for testing over years; (iv) mycelial suspensions for inoculum preparation to cover wood chips more evenly; (v) reference clone—like the studied cultivars—to standardize research outcomes between years and research groups.

Ecological models predict that the effects of mammalian herbivore exclusion on plant diversity depend on resource availability and plant exposure to ungulate grazing over evolutionary time. Using an experiment replicated in 57 grasslands on six continents, with contrasting evolutionary history of grazing, we tested how resources (mean annual precipitation and soil nutrients) determine herbivore exclusion effects on plant diversity, richness and evenness. Here we show that at sites with a long history of ungulate grazing, herbivore exclusion reduced plant diversity by reducing both richness and evenness and the responses of richness and diversity to herbivore exclusion decreased with mean annual precipitation. At sites with a short history of grazing, the effects of herbivore exclusion were not related to precipitation but differed for native and exotic plant richness. Thus, plant species’ evolutionary history of grazing continues to shape the response of the world’s grasslands to changing mammalian herbivory.

This is a dataset of Ellenberg-type indicator values for European vascular plant species described in this article: Tichý L., Axmanová I., Dengler J., Guarino R., Jansen F., Midolo G., Nobis M.P., Van Meerbeek K., Aćić S., Attorre F., Bergmeier E., Biurrun I., Bonari G., Bruelheide H., Campos J.A., Čarni A., Chiarucci A., Ćuk M., Ćušterevska M., Didukh Y., Dítě D., Dítě Z., Dziuba T., Fanelli G., Fernández-Pascual E., Garbolino E., Gavilán R.G., Gégout J.-C., Graf U., Güler B., Hájek M., Hennekens S.M., Jandt U., Jašková A., Jiménez-Alfaro B., Julve P., Kambach S., Karger D.N., Karrer G., Kavgacı A., Knollová I., Kuzemko A., Küzmič F., Landucci F., Lengyel A., Lenoir J., Marcenò C., Moeslund J.E., Novák P., Pérez-Haase A., Peterka T., Pielech R., Pignatti A., Rašomavičius V., Rūsiņa S., Saatkamp A., Šilc U., Škvorc Ž., Theurillat J.-P., Wohlgemuth T. & Chytrý M. (2023) Ellenberg-type indicator values for European vascular plant species. Journal of Vegetation Science, 34, e13168. https://doi.org/10.1111/jvs.13168 The dataset contains: 1) Harmonized Ellenberg-type indicator values for light, temperature, moisture, reaction, nutrients, and salinity for European vascular plants. 2) Original indicator values from 13 datasets of Ellenberg-type indicator values: - Germany (Ellenberg & Leuschner 2010) - Austria (Karrer 1992) - Cantabrian Range (Jiménez-Alfaro et al. 2021) - Czech Republic (Chytrý et al. 2018) - European mires (Hájek et al. 2020) - France (Julve 2015) - Great Britain (Hill et al. 2000) - Greece (South Aegean) (Böhling et al. 2002) - Hungary (Borhidi 1995) - Italy (Guarino & La Rosa 2019, modified) - Saline habitats (Dítě et al. 2023) - Switzerland and the Alps (Landolt et al. 2010) - Ukraine (Didukh 2011) 3) Species nomenclature is standardized according to the Euro+Med PlantBase (http://europlusmed.org)., The final version of the paper (accepted 8th Dec 2022; published 22nd Dec 2022). Difference from version 1.0: Minor changes in newly added species values calculated from co-occurrence with other species in the EVA database. They were corrected using straight-line calibration.

Funding: This work was part of the PhD thesis of the first author, developed at the Graduate Program in Ecology of the National Institute of Amazonian Research (INPA), with a fellowship funded by Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior – Brasil (CAPES), Finance Code 001, (88887.141433/2017-00). The authors are also grateful for the financial and research support of the Conselho Nacional de Desenvolvimento Científico e Tecnológico (CNPq), Amazonas State Research Foundation (FAPEAM), the Newton Fund via the Natural Environment Research Council (NE/M022021/1 to O.L.P. and F.R.C.C.), PPBio Manaus, Centro de Estudos Integrados da Biodiversidade Amazônica and RAINFOR. We also thank Karina Melgaço, Aurora Levesley and Gabriela Lopez-Gonzalez for curating and managing ForestPlots.net. This was ForestPlots.net Project 26 led by Thaiane Sousa. This is publication number 832 of the Technical Series of the Biological Dynamics of Forest Fragments Project (BDFFP, INPA/STRI). Aim : Water availability is the major driver of tropical forest structure and dynamics. Most research has focused on the impacts of climatic water availability, whereas remarkably little is known about the influence of water table depth and excess soil water on forest processes. Nevertheless, given that plants take up water from the soil, the impacts of climatic water supply on plants are likely to be modulated by soil water conditions. Location : Lowland Amazonian forests. Time period : 1971–2019. Methods : We used 344 long-term inventory plots distributed across Amazonia to analyse the effects of long-term climatic and edaphic water supply on forest functioning. We modelled forest structure and dynamics as a function of climatic, soil-water and edaphic properties. Results : Water supplied by both precipitation and groundwater affects forest structure and dynamics, but in different ways. Forests with a shallow water table (depth

Above-ground biomass (AGB) is considered an essential climate variable that underpins our knowledge and information about the role of forests in mitigating climate change. The availability of satellite-based AGB and AGB change (ΔAGB) products has increased in recent years. Here we assessed the past decade net ΔAGB derived from four recent global multi-date AGB maps: ESA-CCI maps, WRI-Flux model, JPL time series, and SMOS-LVOD time series. Our assessments explore and use different reference data sources with biomass re-measurements within the past decade. The reference data comprise National Forest Inventory (NFI) plot data, local ΔAGB maps from airborne LiDAR, and selected Forest Resource Assessment country data from countries with well-developed monitoring capacities. Map to reference data comparisons were performed at levels ranging from 100 m to 25 km spatial scale. The comparisons revealed that LiDAR data compared most reasonably with the maps, while the comparisons using NFI only showed some agreements at aggregation levels

The Municipal Museum of Zierikzee (The Netherlands) houses a loose-leafed herbarium containing 354 plant specimens, of which the provenance, age and maker were until recently unknown. By studying the plant specimens, paper, decorations and labels, an image was conveyed of an early 18th century herbarium that matched the description of a herbarium from the legacy of Jacob Ligtvoet (1684–1752), gardener in the Hortus botanicus of Leiden (The Netherlands) from 1703 till his death in 1752. This herbarium is one of the oldest garden herbaria of its kind and contains 306 unique species, of which 201 are currently native to the Netherlands. Exotic species come from the Mediterranean (81 spp.), South Africa (8), the Americas (10) and tropical Asia (7) and for the larger part from Europe and temperate Asia. Based on our comparison of names on the oldest labels, this collection of dried plants was probably started after publication of the first garden catalogue by the prefect of the Leiden hortus and professor of botany Herman Boerhaave (1710), but before the second edition in 1720. This historic herbarium reflects the state-of-the-art of botanical science and the international network of Dutch botanical gardens in the early 18th century.

The Grevelingen estuary was dammed off and became a lake in 1971. Since 1978 a connection with the North Sea exists to keep the lake saline but management of sluic-es varied over time. Our research of several decades of monitoring data shows that water management lead to drastic changes in water quality and consequent eco-logical shifts in macrobenthic fauna. Benthic biomass, dominated by molluscs, showed major changes with an important role for invasive species. Implications are made towards future management to re-introduce mi-cro-tide (30-50 cm amplitude) in connection with the North Sea to improve water quality and the ecological status of the lake. As the reintroduction of tide will neg-atively affect terrestrial Natura 2000 habitats and spe-cies, including coastal breeding birds, the Dutch gov-ernment will mitigate and compensate for these effects.

Purpose of Review: Outbreaks of tree-killing bark beetles have reached unprecedented levels in conifer forests in the northern hemisphere and are expected to further intensify due to climate change. In parts of Europe, bark beetle outbreaks and efforts to manage them have even triggered social unrests and political instability. These events have increasingly challenged traditional responses to outbreaks, and highlight the need for a more comprehensive management framework. Recent Findings: Several synthesis papers on different aspects of bark beetle ecology and management exist. However, our understanding of outbreak drivers and impacts, principles of ecosystem management, governance, and the role of climate change in the dynamics of ecological and social systems has rapidly advanced in recent years. These advances are suggesting a reconsideration of previous management strategies. Summary: We synthesize the state of knowledge on drivers and impacts of bark beetle outbreaks in Europe and propose a comprehensive context-dependent framework for their management. We illustrate our ideas for two contrasting societal objectives that represent the end-members of a continuum of forest management goals: wood and biomass production and the conservation of biodiversity and natural processes. For production forests, we propose a management approach addressing economic, social, ecological, infrastructural, and legislative aspects of bark beetle disturbances. In conservation forests, where non-intervention is the default option, we elaborate under which circumstances an active intervention is necessary, and whether such an intervention is in conflict with the objective to conserve biodiversity. Our approach revises the current management response to bark beetles in Europe and promotes an interdisciplinary social-ecological approach to dealing with disturbances.

Elke sector in Nederland zal een steentje moeten bijdragen om de doelen van het Klimaatakkoord te behalen. In het Klimaatakkoord staat dat bos en natuur in 2030 0,4-0,8 Mton/jaar extra CO2 moeten vastleggen. Dit is een flinke uitdaging, maar het biedt ook kansen om de Nederlandse bos- en natuurterreinen uit te breiden en te versterken. In 2018 zijn pilots klimaatslim bos- en natuurbeheer gestart om een aantal maatregelen op kleine schaal te testen. In dit artikel beschrijven we aan de hand van de thema’s bosbeheer, bosuitbreiding, agroforestry, landschap, natte natuur en houtketen, de ervaringen uit de pilots en laten we zien welke barrières we nog moeten overwinnen.

Aim: The stress-gradient hypothesis (SGH) postulates that species interactions shift from negative to positive with increasing abiotic stress. Interactions between species are increasingly being recognized as important drivers of species distributions, but it is still unclear whether stress-induced changes in interactions affect continental-to- global scale species distributions. Here, we tested whether associations of vascular plant species in dry grasslands in Europe follow the SGH along a climatic water deficit (CWD) gradient across the continent. Location: Dry grasslands in Europe. Time period: Present. Major taxa studied: Vascular plants. Methods: We built a context-dependent joint species distribution model (JSDM) to estimate the residual associations (i.e., associations that are not explained by the abiotic environment) of 161 plant species as a function of the CWD based on community data from 8,660 vegetation plots. We evaluated changes in residual associations between species for pairs and on the community level, and we compared responses for groups of species with different drought tolerances. Results: We found contrasting shifts in associations for drought-sensitive and drought-tolerant species. For drought-sensitive species, 21% of the pairwise associations became more positive with increasing CWD, whereas 17% became more negative. In contrast, only 17% of the pairwise associations involving drought-tolerant species became more positive, whereas 27% became more negative in areas with a high CWD. Additionally, the incidence of positive associations increased with drought for drought-sensitive species and decreased for drought-tolerant species. Main conclusions: We found that associations of drought-sensitive plant species became more positive with drought, in line with the SGH. In contrast, associations of drought-tolerant species became more negative. Additionally, changes in associations of single species pairs were highly variable. Our results indicate that stress-modulated Aim: The stress-gradient hypothesis (SGH) postulates that species interactions shift from negative to positive with increasing abiotic stress. Interactions between species are increasingly being recognized as important drivers of species distributions, but it is still unclear whether stress-induced changes in interactions affect continental-to- global scale species distributions. Here, we tested whether associations of vascular plant species in dry grasslands in Europe follow the SGH along a climatic water deficit (CWD) gradient across the continent. Location: Dry grasslands in Europe. Time period: Present. Major taxa studied: Vascular plants. Methods: We built a context-dependent joint species distribution model (JSDM) to estimate the residual associations (i.e., associations that are not explained by the abiotic environment) of 161 plant species as a function of the CWD based on community data from 8,660 vegetation plots. We evaluated changes in residual associations between species for pairs and on the community level, and we compared responses for groups of species with different drought tolerances. Results: We found contrasting shifts in associations for drought-sensitive and drought-tolerant species. For drought-sensitive species, 21% of the pairwise associations became more positive with increasing CWD, whereas 17% became more negative. In contrast, only 17% of the pairwise associations involving drought-tolerant species became more positive, whereas 27% became more negative in areas with a high CWD. Additionally, the incidence of positive associations increased with drought for drought-sensitive species and decreased for drought-tolerant species. Main conclusions: We found that associations of drought-sensitive plant species became more positive with drought, in line with the SGH. In contrast, associations of drought-tolerant species became more negative. Additionally, changes in associations of single species pairs were highly variable. Our results indicate that stress-modulated Aim: The stress-gradient hypothesis (SGH) postulates that species interactions shift from negative to positive with increasing abiotic stress. Interactions between species are increasingly being recognized as important drivers of species distributions, but it is still unclear whether stress-induced changes in interactions affect continental-to- global scale species distributions. Here, we tested whether associations of vascular plant species in dry grasslands in Europe follow the SGH along a climatic water deficit (CWD) gradient across the continent. Location: Dry grasslands in Europe. Time period: Present. Major taxa studied: Vascular plants. Methods: We built a context-dependent joint species distribution model (JSDM) to estimate the residual associations (i.e., associations that are not explained by the abiotic environment) of 161 plant species as a function of the CWD based on community data from 8,660 vegetation plots. We evaluated changes in residual associations between species for pairs and on the community level, and we compared responses for groups of species with different drought tolerances. Results: We found contrasting shifts in associations for drought-sensitive and drought-tolerant species. For drought-sensitive species, 21% of the pairwise associations became more positive with increasing CWD, whereas 17% became more negative. In contrast, only 17% of the pairwise associations involving drought-tolerant species became more positive, whereas 27% became more negative in areas with a high CWD. Additionally, the incidence of positive associations increased with drought for drought-sensitive species and decreased for drought-tolerant species. Main conclusions: We found that associations of drought-sensitive plant species became more positive with drought, in line with the SGH. In contrast, associations of drought-tolerant species became more negative. Additionally, changes in associations of single species pairs were highly variable. Our results indicate that stress-modulated species associations might influence the distribution of species over large geographical extents, thus leading to unexpected responses under climate change through shifts in species associations

Het winterbed van de grote rivieren in Nederland is een kansrijk milieu voor ontwikkeling van ooibos en struweel. Maar de ruimte die ooibos in het winterbed krijgt om tot ontwikkeling te komen, is door waterveiligheid sterk ingeperkt. Het Afwegingskader ooibossen is een online-instrument voor natuurplanners, natuurontwikkelaars en terreinbeheerders om de kansen voor ooibosontwikkeling in beeld te brengen. Het instrument laat zien waar potentiële ruimte is voor duurzame ooibosontwikkeling en welke ooibosgemeenschappen zijn te verwachten.

Reliable quantification of the sources and sinks of atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO2), including that of their trends and uncertainties, is essential to monitoring the progress in mitigating anthropogenic emissions under the Kyoto Protocol and the Paris Agreement. This study provides a consolidated synthesis of estimates for all anthropogenic and natural sources and sinks of CO2 for the European Union and UK (EU27 + UK), derived from a combination of state-of-the-art bottom-up (BU) and top-down (TD) data sources and models. Given the wide scope of the work and the variety of datasets involved, this study focuses on identifying essential questions which need to be answered to properly understand the differences between various datasets, in particular with regards to the less-well-characterized fluxes from managed ecosystems. The work integrates recent emission inventory data, process-based ecosystem model results, data-driven sector model results and inverse modeling estimates over the period 1990-2018. BU and TD products are compared with European national greenhouse gas inventories (NGHGIs) reported under the UNFCCC in 2019, aiming to assess and understand the differences between approaches. For the uncertainties in NGHGIs, we used the standard deviation obtained by varying parameters of inventory calculations, reported by the member states following the IPCC Guidelines. Variation in estimates produced with other methods, like atmospheric inversion models (TD) or spatially disaggregated inventory datasets (BU), arises from diverse sources including within-model uncertainty related to parameterization as well as structural differences between models. In comparing NGHGIs with other approaches, a key source of uncertainty is that related to different system boundaries and emission categories (CO2 fossil) and the use of different land use definitions for reporting emissions from land use, land use change and forestry (LULUCF) activities (CO2 land). At the EU27 + UK level, the NGHGI (2019) fossil CO2 emissions (including cement production) account for 2624 Tg CO2 in 2014 while all the other seven bottom-up sources are consistent with the NGHGIs and report a mean of 2588 (± 463 Tg CO2). The inversion reports 2700 Tg CO2 (± 480 Tg CO2), which is well in line with the national inventories. Over 2011-2015, the CO2 land sources and sinks from NGHGI estimates report-90 Tg C yr-1 ± 30 Tg C yr-1 while all other BU approaches report a mean sink of-98 Tg C yr-1 (± 362 Tg of C from dynamic global vegetation models only). For the TD model ensemble results, we observe a much larger spread for regional inversions (i.e., mean of 253 Tg C yr-1 ± 400 Tg C yr-1). This concludes that (a) current independent approaches are consistent with NGHGIs and (b) their uncertainty is too large to allow a verification because of model differences and probably also because of the definition of "CO2 flux"obtained from different approaches. The referenced datasets related to figures are visualized.

De Nederlandse overheid wil dat de Nederlandse bos- en houtketen vanaf 2030jaarlijks 1,5 Mt extra CO2 vastlegt. Ditbetekent meer bos en structureel meerhoutgebruik in de bouw. In opdracht vanLNV hebben wij verkend wat de bijdrageaan de CO2-vastlegging zou kunnen zijnvan gebieden langs de provinciale wegenen snelwegen. We hebben gekeken naarde mogelijkheden om meer en stabielerbos te creëren met ook een productiefunctie voor bouwhout en met behoudvan de functie als begeleiding van infrastructuur. De resultaten van deze studieleveren ook nieuwe inzichten op voormeer koolstofvastlegging in kleine bosarealen in Nederland.

De Bossenstrategie besteedt aandacht aan het belang van het behoud van autochtone genenbronnen: “Veel oorspronkelijke Neder-landse boomsoorten zijn zeldzaam geworden. Genetische bronnen van deze soorten moe-ten worden beschermd.” Naar schatting heeft minder dan 3 procent van de bomen en strui-ken in Nederland een autochtone afkomst. De helft van de ongeveer honderd inheemse boom- en struiksoorten wordt bedreigd met uitsterven. Vier soorten zijn al uitgestorven: de grove den, de koraalmeidoorn, de wollige sneeuwbal en de wilde amandelwilg. In dit ar-tikel gaan we in op de vraag waarom autoch-tone bomen en struiken beschermd moeten worden en hoe we dat kunnen doen.

Mede naar aanleiding van eerdere commotie over de afname van het bosare-aal in Nederland heeft het ministerie van LNV de bossenstrategie opgesteld, waarin gestreefd wordt naar 10% meer bos in 2030. Is daar al iets van te zien in de cijfers? In dit artikel bespreken we de stand van het bosareaal vanuit de nationale klimaatmonitoring van de sector landgebruik en bosbouw. Dit kan ook dienst doen als een ijkpunt voor de monitoring van de doelstelling voor de bossenstrategie.

International audience; Over the past decade, several global maps of above-ground biomass (AGB) have been produced, but they exhibit significant differences that reduce their value for climate and carbon cycle modelling, and also for national estimates of forest carbon stocks and their changes. The number of such maps is anticipated to increase because of new satellite missions dedicated to measuring AGB. Objective and consistent methods to estimate the accuracy and uncertainty of AGB maps are therefore urgently needed. This paper develops and demonstrates a framework aimed at achieving this. The framework provides a means to compare AGB maps with AGB estimates from a global collection of National Forest Inventories and research plots that accounts for the uncertainty of plot AGB errors. This uncertainty depends strongly on plot size, and is dominated by the combined errors from tree measurements and allometric models (inter-quartile range of their standard deviation (SD) = 30–151 Mg ha−1). Estimates of sampling errors are also important, especially in the most common case where plots are smaller than map pixels (SD = 16–44 Mg ha−1). Plot uncertainty estimates are used to calculate the minimum-variance linear unbiased estimates of the mean forest AGB when averaged to 0.1∘. These are used to assess four AGB maps: Baccini (2000), GEOCARBON (2008), GlobBiomass (2010) and CCI Biomass (2017). Map bias, estimated using the differences between the plot and 0.1∘ map averages, is modelled using random forest regression driven by variables shown to affect the map estimates. The bias model is particularly sensitive to the map estimate of AGB and tree cover, and exhibits strong regional biases. Variograms indicate that AGB map errors have map-specific spatial correlation up to a range of 50–104 km, which increases the variance of spatially aggregated AGB map estimates compared to when pixel errors are independent. After bias adjustment, total pantropical AGB and its associated SD are derived for the four map epochs. This total becomes closer to the value estimated by the Forest Resources Assessment after every epoch and shows a similar decrease. The framework is applicable to both local and global-scale analysis, and is available at https://github.com/arnanaraza/PlotToMap. Our study therefore constitutes a major step towards improved AGB map validation and improvement.

Oak wood was highly appreciated and widely used for construction in past centuries. As population sizes expanded in some regions of Europe, local forests were depleted of high-quality timber. Therefore, regions of soaring economies were importing timber initially from the European market and eventually from other continents. Origin of archaeological or historical timber is usually identified by means of dendroprovenancing, i.e. statistical matching of tree-ring-width (TRW) series of timber of unknown origin with TRW reference datasets. However, this method has pitfalls and limitations and therefore alternative techniques are needed. Here, we used three different DNA analysis methods to investigate the potential of using ancient (a)DNA, extracted from oak timber derived from historical buildings and shipwrecks from a variety of countries. All the material had also been analysed dendrochronologically, so its dating and provenance is demonstrated. We included heartwood samples in this analysis, for which DNA extraction is especially challenging as it contains chemicals that inhibit DNA amplification. We succeeded in amplifying DNA for at least one marker from 56% of samples (including heartwood samples), yielding crucial information that allowed us to identify the potential source area of centuries old timber buildings in Latvia and Denmark and of 750-year-old shipwreck material from Germany. Our results prove the strong potential of DNA analyses for identifying timber origin to the regional scale, but by combining these with the dendrochronological results, we can control the exactitude of the aDNA approach and demonstrate a more nuanced examination of the timber sources for these historic structures.

Aims: Vegetation-plot sampling usually involves estimating species cover. For classifying plots to vegetation types, covers are often transformed to decrease the effect of dominant species. However, it remains unclear which transformation is optimal. We suggest that for vegetation classification, optimal is such transformation that contributes to creating clusters of plots in an unsupervised classification that are most similar to the widely accepted vegetation types, e.g., phytosociological associations. Here our aim is to find and recommend such optimal transformation by testing a range of transformation options against the national vegetation classifications of three European countries. Location: Czech Republic, The Netherlands, Great Britain. Methods: Three national datasets of vegetation plots with species cover information, classified to associations or community types of the respective national vegetation classification systems, were analysed. From each dataset, multiple subsets of plots were selected randomly, each subset representing a vegetation-plot table containing several similar associations/community types. Species cover values in these subsets were subjected to various transformations (power transformation, logarithmic transformation and pseudo-species cut levels). Then each subset was classified by an agglomerative classification method (beta-flexible clustering with different beta values), and the classification was compared with the units of the national vegetation classification using the adjusted Rand index. Results: Power transformations of percentage covers with an exponent between 0.3 and 0.6 produced the best match between the unsupervised classifications and the national vegetation classifications. This result did not depend on the classification method used. A similar degree of matching was achieved with some cut levels of pseudo-species and with logarithmic transformation of percentage cover. Conclusions: If an unsupervised classification of vegetation plots aims at defining vegetation types that are close to the phytosociological associations accepted in national vegetation classifications, the best transformation is close to the square-root of percentage cover (i.e., power transformation with exponent 0.5).

Questions: The spread of alien plant species is one of the main threats to the biodiversity of different natural habitats, and coastal dune habitats are among the most affected. There is a considerable local and regional variation in the level of alien plant invasion on coastal dunes. We asked what are the patterns of invasion across European coastal dunes and how they depend on habitat types and coastal regions. Location: Atlantic, Baltic, Black Sea and Mediterranean coasts of Europe. Methods: We used vegetation-plot records from shifting dunes and stable dune grasslands extracted from the European Vegetation Archive (EVA). We quantified richness, frequency and distribution of alien plant (neophyte) species across dune habitats and coastal regions. We also explored the donor habitats and invasion trajectories of these species. Results: In the flora of European coastal dunes, 7% of species were neophytes, for two-thirds originating from outside of Europe and mostly naturalised and ruderal. Shifting and stable dunes were similar in neophyte species composition, but there were more individual occurrences of neophytes in shifting dunes. The neophyte flora composition differed considerably between the Atlantic, Baltic, Black Sea and Mediterranean regions. The highest number of neophyte species was observed on the Atlantic dunes, while the highest number of neophyte occurrences was on the Black Sea dunes. Most of the neophytes originated from North America and the Mediterranean-Turanian region. Erigeron canadensis, Xanthium orientale, Oenothera biennis and Oenothera oakesiana were the most common neophytes. Conclusions: We provided a comprehensive assessment of alien plant invasions in the coastal dunes across Europe and highlighted that coastal dunes should be in the focus of European invasion management strategies.

QUESTIONS: Sod cutting has been used extensively as an effective measure in removing excess N and restoring dwarf shrub dominance in heathlands affected by increased nitrogen deposition. However, recovery of other plant species is often very limited. One barrier is high soil acidity following sod cutting, which results in soil aluminium (Al³⁺) and ammonium (NH₄⁺) reaching toxic concentrations. Sod‐cutting management also removes most of the major nutrients from the system, so intensified nutrient limitation could be an additional barrier to the recovery of species‐rich communities. Soil phosphorus (P) is of special interest as research indicates sod‐cutting management can shift the system to P limitation. LOCATION: Hoge Veluwe National Park, The Netherlands. METHODS: We set up a full‐factorial experiment in sod‐cut heathland formerly encroached by Molinia caerulea, adding phosphate (P+) and lime (Ca+) and over the next three growing seasons, we recorded soil chemistry and plant responses. RESULTS: Soil inorganic N, especially soil NH₄⁺, strongly declined after liming compared to the control situation, confirming that liming alleviates NH₄⁺ toxicity. Addition of P resulted in a similar decline, also suggesting a role for soil phosphate availability in this process. Acid‐sensitive plant species richness increased significantly in both Ca+ and P+ treatment, whereas acid‐insensitive plant species richness only increased significantly as a result of P+ treatment. Mean vegetation relative growth rate increased significantly in both Ca+ and P+ treatments. CONCLUSIONS: Excessive P removal due to sod cutting constitutes a second barrier to restoration in addition to soil acidity. We discourage the large‐scale use of sod cutting to reduce soil N availability in heathlands and propose to use interventions that leave the soil nutrient balance intact, such as burning and grazing, mowing or litter removal, in combination with measures that restore the soil buffer capacity.

International audience; Plant trait variability, emerging from eco-evolutionary dynamics that range from alleles to macroecological scales, is one of the most elusive, but possibly most consequential, aspects of biodiversity. Plasticity, epigenetics, and genetic diversity are major determinants of how plants will respond to climate change, yet these processes are rarely represented in current vegetation models. Here, we provide an overview of the challenges associated with understanding the causes and consequences of plant trait variability, and review current developments to include plasticity and evolutionary mechanisms in vegetation models. We also present a roadmap of research priorities to develop a next generation of vegetation models with flexible traits. Including trait variability in vegetation models is necessary to better represent biosphere responses to global change.