DIVERSE FOREST ARE STRONGER AGAINST DROUGHT A forest is a large area dominated by trees, hundreds of more precise definitions of forest are used throughout the world, incorporating factors such us tree density, tree height, land use, legal standing, and ecological function. In a paper published in Nature, re-searchers led by University of Utah biologist William Anderegg report that forest with trees that employ a high diversity of traits related to water use suffer less of an impact from drought. The result, which expand an previous work that looked at individual tree species re-silience based on hydraulic traits, lead to new research directions on forest re-silience and inform forest managers working to rebuild forest after logging or wildfire. “A forest hydraulic diversity is the predominant predictor how well it can handle a drought.” Anderegg says. 1. Missing the forest for the trees Anderegg is a veteran researcher of the impacts of droughts on trees, with particular attentiont the time it takes for forest to recover from drought. Hydraulic traits are connected to the way a tree moves water throughout the organism and how much drought stress they can take before that system start breaking down. 2. Drought can’t touch this Anderegg and his colleagues, compiled data from 40 forest sites around the world. The sites are equipped with instruments called flux towers that measure the flows of carbon, water, and energy from a forest. They’re also equipped with environmental sensors, including soil moisture sensors, to produce a picture of how much water is moving into and out of the site. Forests with a greater diversity of hydraulic traits in its tree species showed less of a dip in forest function than less diverse forests. Satellite data of temperate forests worldwide confirmed their finding droughts just don’t have the same effect on hydraulic divers forest an on others. 3. Supercharged fire weather The researchers didn’t look specifically at the connection between hydraulic traits, drought, and fire conditions, but a summer of the Western US on fire and the resultant smoke spreading across the country begs the question. The same climate conditions that underlie droughts early snowmelt and hot summertime temperature, for example also underlie hazardous fire seasons. So what can forest managers do to improve diversity abd resilience? Opportunities may come following traumas to the ecosystem such as logging or wildfire. “After we log a forest or a fair comes through,” Anderegg says, “We sometimes think about planting a single species. We should be thinking about the best mixes of multiple species for resilience. Name : Sanina Gunawan(183211117)