Drought and heat-induced mortality of conifer trees is explained by leaf and growth legacies

An increased frequency and severity of droughts and heatwaves have resulted in increased tree mortality and forest dieback across the world but underlying mechanisms are poorly understood. We used a common garden experiment with 20 conifer tree species to quantify mortality after three consecutive hot, dry summers and tested whether mortality could be explained by putative underlying mechanisms, such as stem hydraulics and legacies affected by leaf lifespan and stem growth responses to previous droughts. Mortality varied from 0-79% across species and was, surprisingly, not affected by hydraulic traits. Mortality increased with the species’ leaf lifespan, probably because leaf damage caused crown dieback and contributed to carbon depletion and sensitivity to bark beetle damage. Mortality also increased with lower growth resilience, which may exacerbate the contribution of carbon depletion and bark beetle sensitivity to tree mortality. Our study highlights how ecological legacies at diffe..., , , # Data from: Drought and heat-induced mortality of conifer trees is explained by leaf and growth legacies

[https://doi.org/10.5061/dryad.sbcc2frds](https://doi.org/10.5061/dryad.sbcc2frds)

This dataset contains resilience, mortality, and all functional trait data to produce all figures and tables in the published paper \"Drought and heat-induced mortality of conifer trees is explained by leaf and growth legacies\".

## Description of the data and file structure

Species-specific data are provided.

This dataset contains four Excel files named \"data\", \"SPEI4\", \"dailyCWB\" and \"hist\".

* **data**: Fig 2, Fig S3, Fig S4, Fig S5, Fig S6, Fig S7, Fig S8, Fig S10, Table 2, Table S2, Table S3,
* **SPIE4** (Fig S1): the monthly Standardized Precipitation Evapotranspiration Index from 1970 to 2020.
* **dailyCWB** (Fig S2): annual development of the cumulative water balance visualised for 12 years with the Standardized Precipitation Evapotranspiration Index SPEI<-1.
* **hist** (Fig S9)...