Trees are rewriting their growth rules as climate shifts
Yang F, Zhu L, Cao J, Yang F, Codogno B
Climate Adaptation
The trees shading your street or backing your yard are quietly adjusting their leaf-out timing and wood-building schedules to cope with weirder weather, and knowing this helps explain why some trees near you seem to be struggling while others thrive.
Trees don't just passively endure droughts, heatwaves, and floods, they actively change how and when they grow in response. This review pulls together decades of research on three things: when leaves come out and fall (canopy phenology), how wood forms layer by layer through the season, and how much a tree grows each year. Some of these changes happen fast, within a single tree's lifetime, while others take generations as trees genetically adapt, and scientists still have big gaps in understanding how it all fits together.
Key Findings
Tree growth responses to climate extremes (drought, heatwaves, floods, frost) are highly species-specific and vary by region and timescale
Trees show both rapid physiological responses and longer-term heritable genetic adaptation to climate change
Major research gaps remain in integrating monitoring across canopy, wood, and stem growth processes with genetic studies
chevron_right Technical Summary
As climate change brings more droughts, heatwaves, and erratic weather, this review of tree research shows that trees respond by shifting when they leaf out, how they build wood, and even how fast they grow each year, with some species adapting genetically over generations while others struggle to keep pace.
Abstract Preview
Original paper
Tree growth response and adaptation to climate change and climate extremes: From canopy to stem.
Ongoing climate warming has altered precipitation patterns and increased the frequency and intensity of climate extremes such as droughts, heatwaves, floods, and frosts. These changes have signific...
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Phenology is the study of recurring biological events in plant life cycles—such as flowering, fruiting, and germination—and how these events are timed in response to seasonal and climatic conditions. This research is essential to plant science because phenological patterns directly influence
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