Table Of ContentLandscape Series
Thomas Wohlgemuth
Anke Jentsch
Rupert Seidl Editors
Disturbance
Ecology
Landscape Series
Volume 32
Series Editors
Christine Fürst, Martin Luther University Halle-Wittenberg, Halle (Saale),
Sachsen-Anhalt, Germany
Cristian Echeverria, Universidad de Concepción, Concepción, Chile
Henry N. N. Bulley, BMCC, City University of New York, New York, NY, USA
Editorial Board Members
Buyanbaatar Avirmed, School of Agroecology, Mongolian University of Life
Sciences, Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia
Yazidhi Bamutaze, Dept of Geo Geo-Info & Climatic Sci, Makerere University,
Kampala, Uganda
Bolormaa Batsuuri, National University of Mongolia, Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia
Mahamadou Belem, Nazi Boni University, Bobo Dioulasso, Burkina Faso
Emiru Birhane, Dept. Land Resources Management, Mekelle University,
London, UK
Danilo Boscolo, FFCLRP, Departamento de Biologia, Universidade de Sao Paolo,
Ribeirao Preto, São Paulo, Brazil
Jiquan Chen, Center for Global Change & Earth Observa, Michigan State
University, East Lansing, MI, USA
Nicola Clerici, Department of Biology, Universidad del Rosario,
Bogota, Colombia
Marc Deconchat, National Research Institute for Agriculture, Castanet, France
Andrés Etter, Fac. de Estudios Ambientales y Rurales, Pontificia Universidad
Javeriana, Bogotá DC, Colombia
Pawan K. Joshi, School of Environmental Sciences, Jawaharlal Nehru University
New Delhi, India
Alexander Khoroshev, Dept. Physical Geography & Landscape Sc., Lomonosov
Moscow State University, Moscow, Russia
Felix Kienast, Swiss Federal Institute for Forest, Snow and Landscape Research
WSL, Birmensdorf, Switzerland
Ramesh Krishnamurthy, Department Landscape Level Planning, Wildlife Institute
of India, Chandrabani, Dehradun, Uttarakhand, India
Quang Bao Le, International Center for Agricultural Research in the Dry Areas,
Cairo, Egypt
Yu-Pin Lin, Dept of Bioenvi Systems Engineering, National Taiwan University,
Taipei, Taiwan
Benjamin Kofi Nyarko, Dept of Geography & Regional Planning, University
of Cape Coast, Cape Coast, Ghana
Henrique Pereira, German Centre for Integrative Biodiversity Research
(iDiv), Martin Luther University Halle-Wittenberg, Leipzig, Sachsen, Germany
Alexander Prishchepov, Dept of Geosci & Natural Resource Mgmt, University
of Copenhagen, Copenhagen, Denmark
Robert M. Scheller, North Carolina State University, Raleigh, NC, USA
Kalev Sepp, Inst. Agricultural & Environ. Sciences, Estonian University of Life
Sciences, Tartu, Estonia
Anton Shkaruba, Inst. of Agricultural & Environ Sciences, Estonian University
of Life Sciences, Tartu, Estonia
Janet Silbernagel Balster, Silvernail Studio for Geodesign, LLC, Black
Earth, WI, USA
Ileana Stupariu, Dept. Regional Geography and Environment, University
of Bucharest, Bucharest, Romania
Raymond Tutu, College of Humanities, Delaware State
University, DOVER, DE, USA
Teiji Watanabe, Fac of Environmental Earth Sci, A-301, Hokkaido University,
Sapporo, Hokkaido, Japan
Wei-Ning Xiang, University of North Carolina at Charlotte, Charlotte, NC, USA
Qing Zhao, Institute of Applied Ecology, Chinese Academy of Sciences,
Shenyang, China
Springer’s innovative Landscape Series is committed to publishing high quality
manuscripts that approach the concept of landscape and land systems from a broad
range of perspectives and disciplines. Encouraging contributions that are
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series attracts outstanding research from the natural and social sciences, and from
the humanities and the arts. It also provides a leading forum for publications from
interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary teams across the globe.
The Landscape Series particularly welcomes contributions around several
globally significant areas for landscape research, which are anyhow non-exclusive:
• Climate and global change impacts on landscapes and ecosystems including
mitigation and adaptation strategies
• Human Dimensions of Global Change
• Biodiversity and ecosystem processes linked to ecosystems, landscapes
and regions
• Biogeography
• Ecosystem and landscape services including mapping, assessment and modelling
• Land System Science
• Regional ecology (including bioregional theory & application)
• Human-Environment Interactions and Social-Ecological Systems & Frameworks
(SESF) - including theories, practice and modelling
Volumes in the series can be authored or edited works, cohesively connected around
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the Series aims to facilitate the application of landscape research and land system
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community.
Thomas Wohlgemuth • Anke Jentsch
Rupert Seidl
Editors
Disturbance Ecology
Editors
Thomas Wohlgemuth Anke Jentsch
WSL Swiss Federal Research Institute Universität Bayreuth
Birmensdorf, Zürich, Switzerland Bayreuth, Bayern, Germany
Rupert Seidl
Technical University of Munich
Freising, Bayern, Germany
ISSN 1572-7742 ISSN 1875-1210 (electronic)
Landscape Series
ISBN 978-3-030-98755-8 ISBN 978-3-030-98756-5 (eBook)
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-98756-5
This book is a translation of the original the German language edition “Störungsökologie” by Thomas
Wohlgemuth et al., published by Haupt Verlag AG in © Haupt Bern 2019. All Rights Reserved.
© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature
Switzerland AG 2022
This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the Publisher, whether
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The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland
Contents
1 Disturbance Ecology: A Guideline . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1
Thomas Wohlgemuth, Anke Jentsch, and Rupert Seidl
Part I Definitions and Assessments
2 Disturbances and Disturbance Regimes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11
Anke Jentsch, Rupert Seidl, and Thomas Wohlgemuth
3 Disturbance Regimes and Climate Extremes
of the Earth’s Vegetation Zones . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 41
Anke Jentsch and Andreas von Heßberg
Part II Concepts
4 Disturbance and Biodiversity . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 79
Rupert Seidl, Jörg Müller, and Thomas Wohlgemuth
5 Disturbance Resilience . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 97
Rupert Seidl, Anke Jentsch, and Thomas Wohlgemuth
6 Adaptation to Disturbance . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 117
Georg Gratzer and Anke Jentsch
Part III A biotic Disturbances
7 Fire in Forest Ecosystems: Processes and Management
Strategies . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 143
Daniel Kraus, Thomas Wohlgemuth, Marc Castellnou,
and Marco Conedera
vii
viii Contents
8 Wind Disturbances . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 173
Thomas Wohlgemuth, Marc Hanewinkel, and Rupert Seidl
9 Avalanches and Other Snow Movements . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 195
Peter Bebi, Perry Bartelt, and Christian Rixen
Part IV B iotic Disturbances
10 Tree Diseases . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 213
Marco Pautasso
11 Insect Defoliators. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 239
Christa Schafellner and Katrin Möller
12 Bark Beetles . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 271
Beat Wermelinger and Oliver Jakoby
13 Large Herbivores . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 295
Josef Senn
Part V Anthropogenic Disturbances
14 Forest Management . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 315
Peter Meyer and Christian Ammer
15 Grasslands . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 349
Michael Bahn, Johannes Ingrisch, and Anke Jentsch
Part VI D isturbances and Global Change
16 Impacts of Climate Change on Disturbances . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 377
Rupert Seidl and Markus Kautz
Part VII Disturbances and Management
17 Managing Disturbance Risks . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 393
Rupert Seidl, Sigrid Netherer, and Thomas Thaler
18 Disturbances and Ecosystem Services . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 413
Dominik Thom, Anke Jentsch, and Rupert Seidl
Index . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 435
About the Editors
Thomas Wohlgemuthis head of the research unit Forest Dynamics at the Swiss
Federal Institute for Forest, Snow and Landscape Research WSL in Birmensdorf
(Switzerland). He investigates reforestation after windthrow, forest fire, and
drought-induced mortality, as well as early growth of tree species under experimen-
tal conditions. His focus is on the interaction between disturbance and climate
change, and the effects of this interaction on forest communities.
Anke Jentschis Professor of Disturbance Ecology and Vegetation Dynamics at the
University of Bayreuth (Germany). Her research covers, in particular, disturbance
and biodiversity, natural hazards, and climate change. Her scientific interests focus
on the understanding of ecosystem dynamics and community resilience. Her work
includes extensive field experiments in Central Europe on the effects of weather
extremes on ecosystem functions.
Rupert Seidl is Professor of Ecosystem Dynamics and Forest Management at the
Technical University of Munich (TUM) in Germany. He works towards a better
understanding of forest change and harnesses these insights to improve ecosystem
management. Methodologically, he combines dynamic simulation models with
remote sensing data and field observations to quantify past and potential future
changes in forest structure, composition, and function.
ix
List of Textboxes
Box 2.1 Quantification of Disturbance Regimes in Dynamic
Landscapes ..................................................................................... 16
Box 2.2 Disturbance Interactions, Disturbance Cycles,
and Disturbance Cascades .............................................................. 19
Box 2.3 The Role of Remote Sensing in Disturbance Ecology ................... 24
Box 2.4 Disturbance Regime of an Alpine River Landscape:
The Tagliamento ............................................................................ 28
Box 2.5 Pulse Dynamics in Ecology ........................................................... 32
Box 3.1 Permafrost ...................................................................................... 43
Box 3.2 Disturbances in Marine Ecosystems .............................................. 46
Box 4.1 Disturbance and Species Community Assembly ........................... 88
Box 4.2 A Unification of Many Diversity Hypotheses ................................ 92
Box 6.1 Disturbances as a Selection Factor: An Old Story ......................... 133
Box 8.1 Wind Force and Damage to Trees .................................................. 190
Box 12.1 Mountain Pine Beetle in North America ........................................ 286
Box 15.1 Too Much of a Good Thing: The Decline of Species-Rich
Hay Meadows in Central Europe ................................................... 366
Box 17.1 Disturbance Modelling ................................................................... 399
Box 18.1 Ecological Novelty: A Challenge for Nature Conservation
and Society ..................................................................................... 422
xi
