A 400-year record of disturbance history in the Bohemian Forest Ecosystem: Lessons from unique transboundary tree-rings chronicles

Abstract

Considering the increasing frequency of disturbance events under accelerating global change, detailed knowledge about past forest dynamics forms a crucial foundation for conservation management of national parks. As sufficiently unexplored so far, our research shed light on disturbance history of the Bohemian Forest Ecosystem, comprising the Šumava Mountains and the Bavarian Forest. With a robust dendrochronological dataset of more than 6 000 trees, this is the first cross-border study dating back into the early modern era. Our aim was to compare the age structure and disturbance history on the Czech and Bavarian sides of the border using unified approach. The forest stands originated in the 17th and 18th century, with the most intense regeneration waves during the second half of the 19th century. Trees sampled on the Czech side reached significantly higher age than the Bavarian side. Despite disturbance synchronicity in the second half of the 19th century, summary disturbance histories revealed temporal variability between the Bavarian and Czech side of the border for most centuries, indicating that local storms with biotic outbreaks shaped the forest structure. Explaining the large spatial disturbance variability is challenging, suggesting different past forest management or geographic and climatic conditions as the most likely factors.