Format: ORAL

Albert Vil-Cabrera

CREAF, E08193 Bellaterra (Cerdanyola del Vallès), Catalonia, Spain

Forests are home to a large part of terrestrial biodiversity and underpin critical ecosystem processes, including climate regulation, and carbon and nutrient cycling. Unfortunately, ongoing anthropogenic climate change is reshuffling the geographic distributions of tree species with far-reaching implications for the beneficial contributions of forests to human populations. It is typically assumed that climate change-related risks to forests are higher at species rear edges, i.e., the low latitude and altitude edges of species distributions, because rear edge populations tend occur at the limit of the species climatic tolerances. Yet evidence on uneven patterns of rear edge population loss and retention is accumulating. This variability in population responses may result from the large ecological heterogeneity at species rear edges, including site-level abiotic conditions decoupled from the regional climate, functional trait variability across populations or species interactions. Importantly, climatic stressors and other global change drivers such as anthropogenic land-use changes interact and strongly impact biological communities and may influence species redistributions. Here we present recent and ongoing research on these major regulating factors of forest dynamics at species rear edges. Refining our predictive understanding of species rear edges is essential to advance our ability to monitor and plan for the impacts of climate change on forest biodiversity and functioning.