Horizon 1 1 17 ACL : Articles dans des revues avec comité de lecture répertoriées par l'AERES New Phytologist [14 p.] climate change drought forest flammability live fuel moisture content plant hydraulics process-based modelling tree mortality wildfire FRANCE ZONE MEDITERRANEENNE 2023 fdi:010086688 ENG New Phytologist 0028-646X ISI:000894671500001 10.1111/nph.18614 https://www.documentation.ird.fr/hor/fdi:010086688 https://www.documentation.ird.fr/intranet/publi/2023-01/010086688.pdf [Early access] Horizon (IRD) Fuel moisture content (FMC) is a crucial driver of forest fires in many regions world-wide. Yet, the dynamics of FMC in forest canopies as well as their physiological and environmental determinants remain poorly understood, especially under extreme drought.We embedded a FMC module in the trait-based, plant-hydraulic SurEau-Ecos model to provide innovative process-based predictions of leaf live fuel moisture content (LFMC) and canopy fuel moisture content (CFMC) based on leaf water potential (psi Leaf$$ {\psi}_{\mathrm{Leaf}} $$). SurEau-Ecos-FMC relies on pressure-volume (p-v) curves to simulate LFMC and vulnerability curves to cavitation to simulate foliage mortality.SurEau-Ecos-FMC accurately reproduced psi Leaf$$ {\psi}_{\mathrm{Leaf}} $$ and LFMC dynamics as well as the occurrence of foliage mortality in a Mediterranean Quercus ilex forest. Several traits related to water use (leaf area index, available soil water, and transpiration regulation), vulnerability to cavitation, and p-v curves (full turgor osmotic potential) had the greatest influence on LFMC and CFMC dynamics. As the climate gets drier, our results showed that drought-induced foliage mortality is expected to increase, thereby significantly decreasing CFMC.Our results represent an important advance in our capacity to understand and predict the sensitivity of forests to wildfires. 072 ; 076 ; 021 UR251