Even high-altitude forests in Switzerland are now weakened by frequent droughts, making natural hazards more dangerous

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Add as preferred source Credit: Unsplash/CC0 Public Domain Due to global warming, Swiss forests are now at a tipping point where summer droughts are overwhelming trees' tolerance and resilience, scientists have shown. That bodes ill for people in the valleys because forests form their first line of defense against avalanches, rockfalls, landslides and floods.

"Here we show that it no longer holds true, as was until recently the case, that trees growing at the highest altitudes are mostly shielded from the worst effect of summer droughts," said Dr. Estelle Noyer, a researcher at Bern University of Applied Sciences and the first author of a new study in Frontiers in Forests and Global Change .