Forest Health in a Changing World

Forest pathology, the science of forest health and tree diseases, is operating in a rapidly developing environment. Most importantly, global trade and climate change are increasing the threat to forest ecosystems posed by new diseases. Various studies relevant to forest pathology in a changing world are accumulating, thus making it necessary to provide an update of recent literature. In this contribution, we summarize research at the interface between forest pathology and landscape ecology, biogeography, global change science and research on tree endophytes. Regional outbreaks of tree diseases are requiring interdisciplinary collaboration, e.g. between forest pathologists and landscape ecologists. When tree pathogens are widely distributed, the factors determining their broad-scale distribution can be studied using a biogeographic approach. Global change, the combination of climate and land use change, increased pollution, trade and urbanization, as well as invasive species, will influence the effects of forest disturbances such as wildfires, droughts, storms, diseases and insect outbreaks, thus affecting the health and resilience of forest ecosystems worldwide. Tree endophytes can contribute to biological control of infectious diseases, enhance tolerance to environmental stress or behave as opportunistic weak pathogens potentially competing with more harmful ones. New molecular techniques are available for studying the complete tree endobiome under the influence of global change stressors from the landscape to the intercontinental level. Given that exotic tree diseases have both ecologic and economic consequences, we call for increased interdisciplinary collaboration in the coming decades between forest pathologists and researchers studying endophytes with tree geneticists, evolutionary and landscape ecologists, biogeographers, conservation biologists and global change scientists and outline interdisciplinary research gaps.