Forecasting the growth of tree species to future environmental changes requires a better understanding of its determinants. Tree growth is known to respond to global-change drivers such as climate change or atmospheric deposition, as well as to local land-use drivers such as forest management. Yet, large geographical scale studies examining interactive growth responses to multiple global-change drivers are relatively scarce and rarely consider management effects. Here, we assessed the interactive effects of three global-change drivers (temperature, precipitation and nitrogen deposition) on individual tree growth of three study species (Quercus robur/petraea, Fagus sylvatica and Fraxinus excelsior). We sampled trees along spatial environmental gradients across Europe and accounted for the effects of management for Quercus. We collected increment cores from 267 trees distributed over 151 plots in 19 forest regions and characterized their neighbouring environment to take into account potentially confounding factors such as tree size, competition, soil conditions and elevation. We demonstrate that growth responds interactively to global-change drivers, with species-specific sensitivities to the combined factors. Simultaneously high levels of precipitation and deposition benefited Fraxinus, but negatively affected Quercus' growth, highlighting species-specific interactive tree growth responses to combined drivers. For Fagus, a stronger growth response to higher temperatures was found when precipitation was also higher, illustrating the potential negative effects of drought stress under warming for this species. Furthermore, we show that past forest management can modulate the effects of changing temperatures on Quercus' growth; individuals in plots with a coppicing history showed stronger growth responses to higher temperatures. Overall, our findings highlight how tree growth can be interactively determined by global-change drivers, and how these growth responses might be modulated by past forest management. By showing future growth changes for scenarios of environmental change, we stress the importance of considering multiple drivers, including past management and their interactions, when predicting tree growth.

Białowieża Geobotanical Station Faculty of Biology University of Warsaw Białowieża Poland

Ecologie et Dynamique des Systèmes Anthropisés Jules Verne University of Picardie Amiens Cedex 1 France

Faculty of Biology University of Latvia Riga Latvia

Faculty of Forestry Technical University in Zvolen Zvolen Slovakia National Forest Centre Zvolen Slovakia

Forest and Nature Lab Department of Environment Ghent University Melle Gontrode Belgium

Forest and Nature Lab Department of Environment Ghent University Melle Gontrode Belgium School of Biological Sciences The University of Western Australia Crawley Western Australia Australia

Forest Ecology and Forest Management Group Wageningen University Wageningen The Netherlands

General Botany Institute of Biochemistry and Biology University of Potsdam Potsdam Germany

Institute of Botany Czech Academy of Sciences Brno Czech Republic Department of Botany Faculty of Science Palacký University in Olomouc Olomouc Czech Republic

Institute of Botany Czech Academy of Sciences Průhonice Czech Republic Faculty of Forestry and Wood Sciences Czech University of Life Sciences Prague Czech Republic

Institute of Ecology Leuphana University of Lüneburg Lüneburg Germany

Leibniz ZALF e 5 Müncheberg Müncheberg Germany

Silviculture and Forest Ecology of the Temperate Zones University of Göttingen Göttingen Germany

Southern Swedish Forest Research Centre Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences Alnarp Sweden

UGCT UGent Woodlab Laboratory of Wood Technology Department of Environment Ghent University Gent Belgium

References provided by Crossref.org