Résumé
Reducing forest stand density through thinning has the potential to improve tree vigor and mitigate hydraulic risk as it reduces competition for water, thereby improving soil water availability at the tree level. However, these positive effects might be compensated over time by the growth of the remaining trees and understory, an aspect that remains understudied. We investigated the long-term effects of thinning on vegetation regrowth, growth resistance to drought and hydraulic risk in a 1968 Cedrus atlantica plantation in southeastern France where contrasting thinning intensities were applied in 1992, resulting in stand densities of 1200 (unthinned control), 800, 600 and 400 trees.ha-1. Field measurements were conducted in 2017, 25 years after thinning, during the most severe drought since the trial's establishment. To explore underlying mechanisms, they were complemented by a modeling test using SurEau within the cohort-based model MEDFATE. Our results show that 25 years after thinning, despite similar stand leaf area index across all thinning treatments, trees in thinned stands exhibited significantly higher growth and reduced hydraulic risk (i.e., higher water potential, wider hydraulic safety margins, lower native embolism) than in the unthinned control. Model simulations suggest that this long-term reduction of hydraulic risk by thinning may result from niche partitioning between the overstory and the understory, either spatially (due to differences in rooting depth) or temporally (due to differences in ecophysiological properties). Interestingly, growth resistance to drought did not differ significantly among thinning treatments. Our results emphasize the potential long-lasting role of thinning in reducing hydraulic risk despite vegetation regrowth. Moreover, this study shows that ecophysiological indicators provide a more accurate understanding of tree drought responses during a specific drought event than the commonly used growth-based indicators.