Meteorological and climatological triggers of notable past and present bark beetle outbreaks in the Czech Republic

Abstract

Based on documentary evidence, a chronology of bark beetle outbreaks in the Czech Republic from 1781 to 1963 CE was created, continuing from 1964 through 2021 by bark beetle salvage felling data. The spatial distribution of bark beetle events concentrates on the border mountains of Bohemia and in the northern parts of Moravia and Silesia. The temporal distribution of the most important bark beetle outbreaks is concentrated in the 1830s, 1870s, 1940s–1950s, 1980s, 1990s, 2000s, and 2010s. Each of these notable calamities was analysed in detail with respect to their spatial extent, the volume of damaged wood, and their meteorological patterns. While meteorological triggers of the largest outbreaks of the 19th century were attributed especially to the slow procession of disastrous volumes of damaged wood after large windstorm events sometimes intensified by dying trees in subsequent dry years, the recent warming with relatively stable precipitation from the 1980s moves the main meteorological and climatological triggers to more frequent warm and dry meteorological patterns, acting simultaneously in interaction with severe windstorms. The last bark beetle outbreak from 2015 was evaluated as the most disastrous disturbance to spruce forest over the territory of the Czech Republic in documented history. The paper also discusses uncertainties in bark beetle data, responses to past bark beetle events, and relationships between environment, climate, and bark beetle outbreaks.