Christian Wirth

TL;DR: Stem growth alone is not a sufficient proxy for total biomass production or the control of carbon sequestration by weather extremes, and only in mast years a short-term carbon shortage may occur in spring.

TL;DR: Wirth et al. as discussed by the authors used a trait-based model of forest dynamics to identify the imprint of succession on old-growth forest carbon balances, and showed that the imprint is a function of the number of mature trees and stands.

TL;DR: It is found that plant species richness effects on consumer species richness are consistently positive and mediated by elevated structural and functional diversity of the plant communities, and vary across ecosystems and trophic levels.

TL;DR: A model is presented that combines literature data on natural disturbance intervals and maximum longevities of pioneer trees to estimate the landscape fraction covered by old-growth forests (using the successional definition) without human impact.

TL;DR: Tree mortality is partitioned into distinct processes, and species tend to differ in their susceptibility to one or more of them, which forms a fundamental basis for the understanding of forest dynamics in natural forests, and any mechanistic modelling of mortality in vegetation models could be improved by correctly addressing and formulating the various mortality processes.