Rethinking common gardens for forest tree species in the face of climate change

Key message

Maintaining forest resilience under climate change depends on understanding genetic adaptation and preserving diversity. Long-term common garden networks are essential for revealing how species and populations perform across life stages and environments. When strategically designed and deployed across diverse sites, including suboptimal ones, these networks provide critical empirical insights into adaptive capacity of forest tree species under future climate conditions.

Keywords
Trial network; Multi-environment; Experimental design; Provenance; Climate change adaptation; Forests

Publication
Westergren, M., Streit, K., van Loo, M. et al. Rethinking common gardens for forest tree species in the face of climate change. Annals of Forest Science 83, 40 (2026). https://doi.org/10.1186/s13595-026-01357-3

Handling editor
Erwin Dreyer