We debunked the exaggerated finding by tracking 12 years of hospital mortality data before the campaign started, where we found no change in the already declining mortality trend.
Saplings, however, were much different, displaying no consistent mortality trend.
The proposed model can, in this regard, use the mean mortality trend of reference countries (RCs) to complement the mortality trend of a single country of interest (COI).
The regression model for saplings showed no shift in the mortality trend through time (Fig. 3b).
Controlling for the pre-period mortality trend does not substantially change the estimates of β k.
The coefficient on the pre-period mortality trend is significant (and positive) only when k ≥ 15.
An exception is the P-spline approach that has some difficulties to catch the changing mortality trend for Danish women.
We select these two countries, because they represent two general forecasting situations in terms of the presence of turning points in the long-term mortality trend.
Piecewise regression clearly supported a shift in the mortality trend of large trees in 1990, mirroring the observed rates for the entire stand and common species (Fig. 3a).
The proposed model could capture this turning point, if it modeled the Danish mortality trend to increasingly converge to the one of Sweden.
The historic forest inventory did not include dead trees and so an increasing mortality trend could not be shown in our study.
