Long-term forest-line dynamics in the French Pyrenees: an accelerating upward shift related to forest context, global warming and pastoral abandonment

Abstract

Worldwide, the upper forest line has climbed over the past decades, shaping mountain landscapes in response to global changes. In European mountains, this recent trend is a continuation of the forest transition initiated in the mid-19th century, when forest extent was minimal. This study aimed to (1) reconstruct the forest-line dynamics for the entire French Pyrenees from the mid-19th century until today and (2) investigate the influence of human and environmental drivers on the spatio-temporal variations in forest-line shift. To ascertain the forest-line elevational shift for the 114 municipalities studied, three digital land-use maps (dated 1851, 1993 and 2010) were employed. The forest-line shift velocity was calculated for the two periods delineated by these maps. We applied linear mixed-effect models to analyse the role of human and environmental drivers on the forest-line shift. The mean upward shift was 0.9 m yr−1 during the 1851–1993 period but was four-fold higher during the 1993–2010 period (3.5 m yr−1). During the first period, the forest line shifted upward seven times faster in the eastern Pyrenees, where the mountain pine, a pioneer species, formed the ecotone and pastoral abandonment occurred earlier, than in the western Pyrenees (1.3 vs. 0.2 m yr−1). Conversely, in the following period, the shift occurred three times as fast in the western Pyrenees, where abandonment became widespread, as in the eastern Pyrenees (5.6 vs. 2.1 m yr−1). In addition, during the second period, the closed forest line climbed twice as fast as the forest line (5.6 m yr−1), indicating a pronounced densification of the subalpine forest. Our original approach integrates a large spatial scale and temporal depth and sheds new light on the interrelationships between global warming, pastoral abandonment and the forest-line upward shift.