Participants in the CLEANFOREST WG4 met at the Ecological-Botanical Garden of the University of Bayreuth to draft the global meta-study on effects of nitrogen fertilization experiments and climate extremes in forests. Picture by Nicolai Nürk, January 2025.
The health of forests depends on whether they are able to cope with and adapt to the effects of global climate change. Increasing drought and heat, but also more anthropogenic nutrient inputs are the challenges. There are already many experiments and studies worldwide on the influence of the individual factors. However, it has not yet been possible to link these data in order to learn more about the interaction between the individual environmental factors and their influence on forest. At the end of January, a core team of the WG4 of the CLEANFOREST COST Action therefore met for two days (28-29 January) at the invitation of the Ecological-Botanical Garden of the University of Bayreuth to jointly draft an outline for a meta-study that aims at analysing the interacting effects of drought conditions and experimental nitrogen fertilization on trees and forest ecosystems. This outline and the guideline developed during the meeting will be an important aid for the other COST participants to extract data from many hundreds of pre-selected experimental studies on nitrogen fertilisation in a huge collaborative approach. With the meeting, the group took a next step to the ultimate goal of using these data for analysing the interacting effect of drought and nutrient input on forests in a meta-study.