A georeferenced dataset of drought and heat-induced tree mortality in Europe

Global warming is altering climate patterns and the frequency and magnitude of heat and drought events affecting ecosystems worldwide. One of the effects of these changes is tree mortality driven by heat and drought, which have effects in forest ecosystem functions, services and biodiversity. Therefore, systematic observations and georeferenced data on tree mortality is a fundamental prerequisite for a more comprehensive understanding of the complex interactions between climate and forests. Tree mortality is a complex process for which literature presents major knowledge gaps, making predictions on the fate of climate change challenging. Some of the gaps are due to limited spatio-temporal data on tree mortality. Despite extensive tree mortality and forest dieback, associated with drought and temperature stress, have been reported in Europe, a publicly available systematic collection of georeferenced data reporting tree mortality is lacking. The dataset presented in this paper is a contribution to mitigate the lack of information on tree mortality. Our dataset builds on scientific and peer-reviewed literature and provides a georeferenced set of documented tree mortality occurrences in the period 1970-2017 in Europe. The aim of this study is to describe the creation of the dataset and to provide the data file to interested users.