Environmental stresses do not always adversely affect seedling growth

Excessively high temperatures and droughts after winter dormancy breaking can affect the growth and mortality of seedlings. An open-field experiment was conducted to understand the growth and mortality of Larix kaempferi seedlings to spring warming and drought treatments, and further to explore if seedlings could recover the growth capability when the treatments ceased. One-year-old seedlings were subjected to two temperature levels (ambient temperature and infrared heater warming of 4 °C compared to ambient temperature) and two precipitation levels (ambient precipitation and drought) for four weeks. Warming and drought treatments decreased the height and root collar diameter of seedlings throughout the period. After the cessation of treatments, mortality rates continued to increase in the drought-treated plots until the end of the growing season in November; the combination of warming and drought treatments had the highest mortality rates, followed by the drought treatment, the control, and the warming treatment. However, the combination of warming and drought treatments increased the biomass accumulation, seedling height, and root collar diameter at the end of the growing season. This indicates that the reduced number of seedlings per plot due to the increased mortality may reduce the negative effects of warming and drought on seedling growth through alleviating resource competition among seedlings. This study shows the growth of Larix kaempferi seedlings could decline under warmer and drier conditions, and such effects are likely to be mitigated by the decreased density due to the increased mortality rates. Keywords: climate change; drought; growth; Larix kaempferi; mortality ID: 3622945

Bibliographic Details

Main Author:	Kim, H., Jo, H., Kim, G., Kim, H., Son, Y.
Format:	Article biblioteca
Language:	English
Published:	FAO ; 2022
Online Access:	https://openknowledge.fao.org/handle/20.500.14283/CC1237EN http://www.fao.org/3/cc1237en/cc1237en.pdf
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