The great 2008 ice storm destroyed considerable areas in the Gutianshan Nature Reserve. In the Comparative Study Plots (CSPs) we quantified the amount of wood downed by the ice storm (coarse woody debris data). Combining data on living and killed trees, we estimated a general unimodal stem breaking probability using a Ricker function. Here we give the averaged deviations from that unimodal function for each species. Positive deviations indicate increased risk to break compared with the general expectation, and negative values indicate a lower risk to break.

"In the 30x30m CSPs the central of 9 subplots was mapped in greater detail than the remaining 8 plots, resulting in more tree stems <10cm in the central plot only. We checked for duplicated stems based on the stemID. There is an attached files with an R script, with which the data were generated. ---- We used the Power Rickerts function (Bolker 2007) to estimate size dependent mortality due to the ice storm for all individuals. The function describes a uni-modal curve through the origin and returning to zero mortality risk for very large individuals:p=(p ) ̂(x/x ̂ e^((1-x/x ̂ )^α ) )The three parameters of the Power Rickerts function are maximum mortality ((p ) ̂), diameter at maximum mortality (x ̂), and a scaling factor increasing the slope of the curve reaching maximum mortality (α). We used Bayesian inference and Gibbs Sampling via Markov Chain Monte Carlo (JAGS: Plummer, 2003) with uninformative priors to derive mortality risk estimates for each tree individual and to estimate model parameters and their confidence intervals.

Comparative Study sites, BEF China Experiment, Gutianshan, China 29°08'-29°17'N 118°02'-118°11'E

Living stems in 2008, killed stems in 2008 and early 2009.

Tree species names as in the reference list for tree species.