Florian Hartig Theoretical Ecology & Ecological Data Science

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Heavy and frequent thinning promotes drought adaptation in Pinus sylvestris forests

Julia A. Sohn, Florian Hartig, Martin Kohler, Jürgen Huss, Jürgen Bauhus

Ecological Applications, 26(7), 2190–2205 (2016)
Cite this
@article{sohn2016drought,
  author = {Julia A. Sohn and Florian Hartig and Martin Kohler and Jürgen Huss and Jürgen Bauhus},
  title = {Heavy and frequent thinning promotes drought adaptation in Pinus sylvestris forests},
  journal = {Ecological Applications},
  volume = {26},
  number = {7},
  pages = {2190–2205},
  year = {2016},
  doi = {10.1002/eap.1373},
}

DOI: 10.1002/eap.1373
Cited by 175 (Google Scholar) · 129 (OpenAlex), as of 07 September 2026

View article (DOI)

Abstract

Droughts and their negative effects on forest ecosystems are projected to increase under climate change for many regions. It has been suggested that intensive thinning could reduce drought impacts on established forests in the short term, but most previous studies have been confined to single forest sites, so it is still unclear how general and persisting the benefits of thinning are. This study assesses the potential of thinning to increase drought tolerance of the widespread Scots pine (Pinus sylvestris) in Central Europe. We hypothesized that increasing thinning intensity benefits the maintenance of radial growth of crop trees during drought (resistance) and its recovery following drought; that those benefits decrease with time elapsed since the last thinning and with stand age; and that they may depend on drought severity as well as water limitations in pre- and post-drought periods. We assessed the effects of thinning regime, stand age, and drought severity on radial growth of 129 Scots pine trees during and after drought events in four long-term thinning experiments in Germany. Thinning improved the recovery of radial growth following drought, and to a lesser extent the growth resistance during a drought event; growth recovery was highest after the first thinning intervention and in recently and heavily thinned stands, but this effect decreased with time since the last thinning and could even become negative compared to unthinned stands. Thinning also helped avoid an age-related decline in growth resistance and recovery following drought. According to our analysis, only thinning regimes with relatively heavy and frequent thinning interventions would increase drought tolerance in pine stands.

What the paper shows and why it matters (AI-generated)

Thinning has long been suggested as a way to help forests cope with drought, but most supporting evidence came from single sites, leaving open how general the effect really is. Tracking 129 Scots pine trees across four long-term German thinning experiments, the authors find heavy, frequent thinning does improve drought recovery and, to a lesser extent, resistance — though the benefit fades with time since the last intervention, meaning thinning isn't a one-time fix. The finding continues to anchor an active line of work testing thinning intensity against drought across pine populations from the Alps to the Iberian Peninsula.