Refining the Representation of Forest Management Practices in JSBACH4

Fostering sustainable management of forests is pivotal in advancing Europe's climate resilience and achieving its short- and long-term environmental objectives. Any management strategy has multifaceted impacts, influencing carbon cycling and also leading to biogeophysical consequences arising from altered energy partitioning in the forest, for example. Modelling can offer valuable insights into these complexities, making it a beneficial tool aiding the pursuit of science-based solutions to inform policy and decision-making processes. 
 
This work introduces improvements in the representation of wood harvesting and different forest management scenarios in JSBACH4, the current version of the land component of the ICOsahedral Nonhydrostatic Earth System Model (ICON-ESM) framework. The previously established forest age class scheme of JSBACH 4 and the extensive forest parameters and harvesting schemes from the model G4M-X (by the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis) are utilised in the development.  This combination of a detailed forestry model integrated into decision-making frameworks, coupled with an advanced land surface model intricately linking to the entirety of key climate processes, holds great potential to enhance our understanding for the management of ecosystems. The objective of this effort is to enhance the sophistication of the related forest parameters in JSBACH4, enabling a more comprehensive simulation of various forest management scenarios.  This will allow capturing the nuanced carbon cycling and biogeophysical effects associated with different types of forest management and wood harvesting practices.