Joan Dudney

Anthropogenic activity has irreparably altered the ecological fabric of Earth. The emergence of ecological novelty from diverse drivers of change is an increasingly challenging dimension of ecosystem restoration. At the same time, the restorationist's tool kit continues to grow, including a variety of powerful and increasingly prevalent technologies. Thus, ecosystem restoration finds itself at the center of intersecting challenges. How should we respond to increasingly common emergence of environmental system states with little or no historical precedent, whilst considering the appropriate deployment of potentially consequential and largely untested interventions that may give rise to organisms, system states, and/or processes that are likewise without historical precedent? We use the term bionovelty to encapsulate these intersecting themes and examine the implications of bionovelty for ecological restoration.

Climate change is shifting the structure and function of global forests, underscoring the critical need to predict which forests are most vulnerable to a hotter and drier future. We analyzed 6.6 million tree rings from 122 species to assess trees’ sensitivity to water and energy availability. We found that trees growing in wetter portions of their range exhibit the greatest drought sensitivity. To test how these patterns of drought sensitivity influence vulnerability to climate change, we predicted tree growth through 2100. Our results suggest that drought adaptations in arid regions will partially buffer trees against climate change. By contrast, trees growing in the wetter, hotter portions of their climatic range may experience unexpectedly large adverse impacts under climate change.