India, July 8 -- Trees across French forests have been dying prematurely over the past decade, signalling widespread climate-driven forest decline, according to a new study.

The paper by the Swiss Federal Institute for Forest, Snow and Landscape Research (WSL), published in Nature Communications, said there was a 1.5- to 4-fold increase in mortality rates among the nine most common tree species, including European beech, pedunculate oak, and Norway spruce.

The researchers reached these conclusions after analysing data of over 500,000 individual trees across 52 different species for the period 2015-2023 from the French National Forest Inventory (NFI).

Ecologically and economically important species such as Fagus sylvatica, Quercus robur...