Forest types are key factors to consider when monitoring forests, particularly in consideration of  the increasing need to assess how climate change is affecting different forests in Europe and beyond. A comprehensive classification system is indeed essential for understanding the diverse forest ecosystems, tracking their changes over time and across various spatial and geographical scales. Moreover, it provides valuable insights on the baseline conditions and current states of forest ecosystems, aiding in decision-making for conservation and resource management. 

A "forest type classification scheme" aims to break down extensive forested areas, like stocked forest land, into smaller, more similar units. This breakdown helps streamline the analysis, interpretation, and communication of forest-related data. In Europe, the European Forest Types (EFT) classification system has demonstrated its effectiveness and user-friendliness in facilitating the comprehension, interpretation, and dissemination of data regarding indicators that depict the conditions and changes within European forests, as well as forest management practices. The EFT, could support a standardised reporting of several forest area related indicators. This includes assessments of biodiversity, organised into ecologically similar groups across the entire European region. However, until now, there was no EFTs map available for Europe.  To produce the map, a comprehensive analysis of relevant spatial datasets available at the European scale, essential for mapping, was first carried out.  Based on the variety of the datasets available, the JRC dataset featuring a comprehensive 39 forest tree species "relative probability of presence (RPP) maps”, was used along with eight different forest masks developed to identify environmental diversity, to accurately identify the different EFT categories. The RPP maps and the forest masks were used as inputs in a rule-based expert system algorithm to identify the 14 EFT categories and provide a thorough explanation for the classification of the EFT categories. The raster map created at a scale of 100 metres enabled the production of the first consistent EFTs maps across Europe and marked a significant advancement, providing a systematic means of classifying forest areas into EFTs, filling a critical gap in the spatial monitoring and reporting of forest indicators in the context of international frameworks. Moreover, existing EFTs maps can effectively be used as a basis for forest monitoring and support for decision-making, including forest-based adaptation and mitigation needs.

This study was funded by the Horizon Europe Project OptFor-EU (Grant agreement n°101060554).

How to cite: Giannetti, F., Zorzi, I., Linser, S., Neumann, M., Cheval, S., Collalti, A., Vangi, E., Grieco, E., Travaglini, D., Chirici, G., and Barbati, A.: European Forest Type Map, EGU General Assembly 2024, Vienna, Austria, 14–19 Apr 2024, EGU24-3418, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu24-3418, 2024.

Forests play a crucial role in climate change mitigation strategies. They store carbon in biomass, soils, and wood products, and substituting carbon-intensive products with wood products further avoids greenhouse gas emissions. However, substantial uncertainties surround the quantification of their actual mitigation potentials.

Using dynamic vegetation modeling, we quantify the impact of various factors on the mitigation potential of forests, namely climate change and nitrogen deposition, disturbances, forest age, forest type, harvesting and wood usage practices, and the decarbonization pace of non-wood products. Our results indicate that reducing sustainable harvest levels is not reasonable within the next decades as wood products will continue to provide substantial substitution effects, even in scenarios with rapid decarbonization. However, increased material usage should be prioritized over using wood as fuel.

Climate change, disturbances, and decarbonization introduce critical uncertainties that require novel methods and data to address these uncertainties. Moreover, forests offer many more ecosystem services than climate change mitigation. Their provision needs to be considered in forward-looking, climate-smart management strategies, alongside their adaptation potential to a rapidly changing climate. To this end, we propose a robust multi-criteria optimization approach for developing strategies for multi-functional forestry that are viable across a broad range of climate scenarios and adhere to demands on timber production and EU strategies. Our methodology indicates that all these demands and aims exert strong pressure on European forests. Alleviating this pressure will be necessary to ensure healthy forests that can provide climate change mitigation and other ecosystem services.

How to cite: Gregor, K., Krause, A., Reyer, C., Knoke, T., Suvanto, S., Nagel, T., and Rammig, A.: Multi-Functional Forestry in Europe: Balancing Climate Change Mitigation, Timber Production, and Ecosystem Services, EGU General Assembly 2024, Vienna, Austria, 14–19 Apr 2024, EGU24-1727, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu24-1727, 2024.

Climate change is endangering natural and anthropogenic ecosystems, as pointed out by the recent IPCC Reports and the COPs' statements. The impacts of climate change on natural ecosystems can affect their production capacity, particularly in those systems characterized by a high quality of yields, especially in densely populated and industrialized countries. We analyze two recent intense rainfall events that hit the Emilia-Romagna and Tuscany (Italy) regions and the damage caused to the agricultural ecosystems downstream of forests and woodlands. Although the scientific debate on these events' climatic or purely meteorological origin is still open, these occurrences provide a potential direct example of the harm climate change may bring. The topic of forest management for risk reduction is also analyzed on the forest itself and anthropized systems and related economies. The study was conducted within the European OptFor-EU Project.

How to cite: Georgiadis, T., Cremonini, L., Matteucci, G., Rossi, F., Giannetti, F., Zorzi, I., Collalti, A., D'andrea, E., and Cardoni, S.: Enhanced precipitation events and forests stability: a case study in Emilia-Romagna and Tuscany (Italy)., EGU General Assembly 2024, Vienna, Austria, 14–19 Apr 2024, EGU24-3090, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu24-3090, 2024.

Forests are expected to provide several ecosystem services, such as wood production, clean water and carbon sequestration and storage, simultaneously. The basic aerial unit of forest management is gradually changing from stand to catchment scale. Catchment scale management of forest nutrient balance is an important part of modern forestry. A leap towards holistic management of ecosystem services through customised forest management strategies has become possible when high resolution forest, terrain, and soil data can be combined with detailed process-based ecosystem models. We have developed catchment level, spatially distributed nutrient balance and hydrology models, which calculate location-specific forest growth, carbon and nutrient dynamics, and the nutrient export to water courses. Model applications have shown that the nutrient export is very unevenly distributed throughout catchments: 5 % of the catchment area can produce 25% of the nitrogen export. This identification of nutrient export hotspots facilitates knowledge-based planning of forest operations and cost-efficient locating of water protection. We have found that catchments may also contain locations where the stand growth is nutrient limited. This opens the possibility for precision fertilization in which the quality, dose and timing of the fertilization can be adjusted so that the site-specific nutrient supply meets the nutrient demand. Our simulations indicate that especially in peatland forests, fertilization together with water and forest management can effectively improve wood production, decrease carbon emissions and control nutrient export to watercourses.  Furthermore, these models can be used to compare different harvesting methods and forest management strategies with respect to multiple ecosystem services. Process-based ecosystem models including nutrient balance and geospatial high-resolution data are particularly useful in forecasting the effects of climate change allowing development of pro-active adaptation schemes in a specific catchment.

How to cite: Palviainen, M. and Laurén, A.: Nutrient balance as a tool in multi-objective forest management aiming at climate change mitigation and other ecosystem services, EGU General Assembly 2024, Vienna, Austria, 14–19 Apr 2024, EGU24-3102, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu24-3102, 2024.

How to cite: Asmus, C., Buntemeyer, L., Knutzen, F., Pietikäinen, J.-P., and Rechid, D.: Assessing the effects of heat and droughts on forest-climate interactions in Europe using a regional climate model with an interactively coupled vegetation module , EGU General Assembly 2024, Vienna, Austria, 14–19 Apr 2024, EGU24-10675, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu24-10675, 2024.

A forest type (FT) generally describes a category of forest defined by its composition, and/or site-specific factors, and used in a system suitable to the situation at country level. The FTs are recognised to be a flexible approach to support the collection of data and organise forest indicators in a given area at different spatial scales, from country up to continental level.

The ongoing climate change is associated with increased intensity, duration and spatial extent of climate extremes, which may exacerbate the impacts on many ecological systems and socio-economic sectors, including  forest ecosystems and forest management.

This study explores the observed variability (1991-2020) and estimated changes (2021-2050) in the climate extremes that may occur over the European Forest Types (EFT), to provide a continental-scale perspective of the potential impact on forest ecosystems and provide decision support for forest management. Both temperature and precipitation CLIMPACT extremes indices relevant for forestry described and proposed by the Expert Team on Sector-Specific Climate Indices were computed using CERRA sub-daily regional reanalysis data for Europe. We use model outputs of climate change projections based on two Representative Concentration Pathways (i.e., RCP4.5, and RCP8.5). The climate information was analysed in combination with the 100 m resolution gridded EFT dataset produced within the Horizon Europe project OptFor-EU, ensuring consistency with similar studies at the European level. The results are detailed for case study areas situated in eight European countries (Norway, Lithuania, United Kingdom, Germany, Austria, Romania, Spain, and Italy).

While all EFTs are subject to increasing temperatures extremes and precipitation intensities, we found clear regional differences. The continental coverage and the level of details provided by these results support both the development of EU adaptation and mitigation strategies and plans, as well as the local forest management practices within the climate change context.

Acknowledgements

This research received funds from the project “OPTimising FORest management decisions for a low-carbon, climate resilient future in Europe (OptFor-EU)” funded by the European Union Horizon Europe programme, under Grant agreement n°101060554.

How to cite: Cheval, S., Gianetti, F., Collalti, A., Dumitrescu, A., Neumann, M., and Tudose, N. C.: Changes in climate extremes over the European Forest Types (1991-2050), EGU General Assembly 2024, Vienna, Austria, 14–19 Apr 2024, EGU24-14753, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu24-14753, 2024.

Forests stand at the forefront of climate change adaptation strategies, with their ability to sequester and store carbon, sustain bioeconomies, foster biodiversity, and provide a whole range of other ecosystem services. There is an increasing trend of promoting this multipurpose functionality of forests, resulting in a shift towards silvicultural practices that differ heavily from the now dominant even-aged, clear-cut forestry. One of these alternative management practices to promote multipurpose functionality is plenter forest management, a type of uneven-aged selection cutting system. Only little is known about the applicability of this management system on a regional or national scale. Therefore, this study assesses the potential expansion of plenter forest management, crucial for climate change mitigation. Focusing on tree species suitability, harvesting constraints, and road accessibility, we analysed factors impacting plenter management for the Austrian province of Styria for current and future climate conditions. Our findings reveal that while current forestry predominantly features even-aged Norway spruce, approximately 14% of the forest area could be managed as mixed-species plenter forests under current conditions. This research contributes to understanding potential in transforming forest practices for enhanced biodiversity, ecosystem services, and climate resilience on a regional scale.

How to cite: Leiter, M., Pucher, C., Hönigsberger, F., Kessler, M., Lexer, M. J., Vacik, H., and Hasenauer, H.: Navigating Climate Change: Exploring Plenter Forest Potential in Styria, Austria, EGU General Assembly 2024, Vienna, Austria, 14–19 Apr 2024, EGU24-16822, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu24-16822, 2024.

Removal of CO2 from the atmosphere (CDR) will most likely be required to reach the goal of the Paris Agreement to limit global warming to well-below 2°C above pre-industrial temperature, in addition to rapid reduction of greenhouse gas emissions. Re-/afforestation (A/R) is among the most prominently discussed CDR methods, as it can be realized at low cost and is already implemented in many places today. However, forests are vulnerable to various disturbances caused by climate change, such as wildfires, droughts, and heat stress, which can lead to a decreased CO2 uptake or even a release of previously stored carbon back to the atmosphere. There is still a high uncertainty on the effects of climate change on the CDR potential of A/R. Here, we show spatially explicit how climate change affects the potential of A/R to sequester and store carbon under severe climate change (SSP3-7.0) and moderate climate change (SSP1-2.6), as simulated by the dynamic global vegetation model LPJmL5. Utilizing a highly stylized global afforestation scenario, we explore changes in net primary productivity, soil respiration and CO2 emissions from fires and identify the region-specific underlying causes (such as soil moisture changes or heat stress). We also demonstrate to what extent CO2 fertilization could counteract detrimental effects of climate change and highlight the possibility to underestimate climate impacts by overestimating the CO2 fertilization effect. By revealing and explaining spatial patterns of simulated future climate impacts on the CDR potential of A/R, our study contributes to a more profound understanding of the role A/R might be able to play in removing CO2 from the atmosphere.

How to cite: Mathesius, S. and Gerten, D.: Spatially differentiated impacts of climate change on the carbon sequestration potential of afforestation and reforestation, EGU General Assembly 2024, Vienna, Austria, 14–19 Apr 2024, EGU24-10702, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu24-10702, 2024.

Forests play a crucial role in the EU's strategy for decarbonisation and in achieving neutrality targets, primarily through their capacity for carbon sequestration (carbon stock change) and storage (carbon stock) in above-ground biomass, dead organic matter, and soil organic matter. Alongside reforestation, sustainable forest management practices can further enhance the role of forests in decarbonisation. Our focus is on the Argeș-Vedea basin in Romania, a region stretching from the Carpathian Mountains to the Danube River. We analyse systematic sample plots across an area covering 300,000 hectares of forest.

We studied the relationship between stand attributes (basal area, diameter at breast height, age, species) and carbon stock changes in various carbon pools, evaluated also under different forest management practices context. Correlation analysis reveals a negative correlation between basal area and carbon stock changes in living trees and litter, which suggests that an increased basal area leads to reduced carbon stock changes (r= -0.15). Older stands tend to have lower net living tree carbon changes due to reduced growth and increased disturbance. Similarly, we found that soil carbon stock generally increases with the age of stands and decreases following disturbance, such as the harvesting of older stands (i.e., on average, by 10%).

The effects of various forest management practices (no intervention, clear-cuts, shelterwood, thinning, and stands affected by natural disturbance) on different carbon pools are distinct. While all interventions generally decrease carbon stock in above-ground biomass, thinning operations result in a minor increase, especially in the lower-density stands, but still five times less than non-intervention stands (+13 tC/ha) with a decrease in deadwood carbon, indicating the role of selective removal in forest health maintenance. In contrast, in no intervention management increases living tree carbon, underscoring the benefits of natural forest dynamics. Stands in the initial development stage exhibit the highest carbon sequestration capacity (+11 tC/ha), while stands in the understory initialization stage show a decrease in tree biomass (-11 tC/ha) due to the harvesting operations. Natural disturbances significantly impact the deadwood pool, tripling the carbon stock change compared to shelterwood-managed stands. Stands, where thinning is performed, are the only ones showing decreased deadwood carbon stock change. Similarly, the litter pool decreases in stands undergoing thinning and clear-cutting. Regarding the regeneration pool, stands affected by clear-cuts and natural disturbance (in a five-year period) showed the highest decrease in carbon stock change (-0.03 tC/ha).

This research reveals key insights into the variations in carbon stock caused by different management practices and the age progression of forest stands. This information is crucial for accurately modelling the carbon dynamics within forest ecosystems.

How to cite: Radu, R. G., Neumann, M., Tudose, N. C., Marin, M., Ungurean, C., and Cheval, S.: Assessing the Forest Management Impact on Forest Carbon Dynamics in Romanian Forests, EGU General Assembly 2024, Vienna, Austria, 14–19 Apr 2024, EGU24-16649, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu24-16649, 2024.

Climate change stands as a primary stressor, exerting various adverse effects on forests that are particularly susceptible to swift alterations in climatic parameters. At the same time, forests provide a range of ecosystem services beneficial for society. Therefore, a proper management and planning of forests is essential to mitigate the effects of climate change and provide valuable services. Forest management and planning is a complex process due to numerous socio-economic, administrative or environmental aspects that should be considered at different spatial scales. To this end, Decision Support Systems (DSSs) proved to be valuable tools that guide forest managers in enhancing forest resilience and its capacities to mitigate climate change. Engaging stakeholders from the very beginning of the DSSs development process is seen as a prerequisite for the project’s success, adding value and delivering more serviceable outputs. 

Here, we summarize the most important outputs stemming from a stakeholder engagement process that occurred between July−December 2023, in order to raise awareness about the role of forests in achieving climate ambitions, identify relevant stakeholders and build relationships. These aspects serve as a basis for achieving the following research objectives: provide an improved characterisation of the forest services to mitigate climate change related risks, utilise end-user focused process modelling, empower forest end-users to make informed decisions to enhance forest resilience and forest mitigation, provide a novel decision support tool, bridging different European Union strategic priorities, robust science, and stakeholders in the forest and forest-based sectors. In addition, a novel set of Essential Forest Mitigation Indicators (EFMI) will be proposed to assess the climate change impact and its relation to forest management. Their relevance will be validated through stakeholder consultation.

The stakeholder engagement was performed through on-site workshops, and online, phone and email consultations, in eight European countries (Norway, Lithuania, United Kingdom, Germany, Austria, Romania, Spain, and Italy). Common issues that arose through the engagement of stakeholders are related to the challenges of handling different variables (e.g. scale of the study area, public/private forest ownership) between countries and differences in forest management across case studies. The most important lessons learned after the stakeholders workshops are: the importance of trusted relationships with local partners for an effective stakeholder engagement, the significance of including the stakeholders needs and expectations for a successful, long-term partnership, avoiding language barriers by using a non-technical language, as well as long-term policies and funding sources for planning security. A unique feature of the conducted workshops is the interest of stakeholders to be involved and contribute to the development of the Forest DSS, as a user-friendly and tailored tool to their needs.

Acknowledgements

This research received funds from the project “OPTimising FORest management decisions for a low-carbon, climate resilient future in Europe (OptFor-EU)” funded by the European Union Horizon Europe programme, under Grant agreement n°101060554

How to cite: Tudose, N. C., Asmus, C., Cheval, S., Georgiadis, T., Mitter, H., Inácio, M., Johannessen, M. R., Anand, J., Knutzen, F., Linser, S., Marin, M., Matteucci, G., Neumann, M., Pereira, P., Radu, R. G., Spiegelhalder, M. R., and Ungurean, C.: Co-developing a Decision Support System for climate adaptation and mitigation of European forests: lessons learnt from the stakeholder engagement, EGU General Assembly 2024, Vienna, Austria, 14–19 Apr 2024, EGU24-16389, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu24-16389, 2024.

When the EU Commission launched the plan of planting additional “three billion trees” within the Green Deals` strategy, it did not foresee the outcry amongst environmentalist groups and forestry sector groups alike. For both types of stakeholders, the measure is not effective, albeit for opposite reasons: Whilst environmentalists criticise that it halters the increase of biodiversity, the forestry sector interest groups denote the strategy as not understanding the practices of tree planting in forest management. Indeed, the policy so far is reported as one of European failure, at least according to the forest reporting and monitoring systems (Forest Information System for Europe, 2022). The paper sets out to investigate the current policy responses which mirror the manyfold demands around forests for both climate mitigation and adaptation measures (Ludvig et al. 2021). Forests are often depicted as best solutions to carbon storage and the building of carbon stocks (Law et al. 2011). However, foresight studies on grounds of forest inventories have shown that forests cannot respond to many of these demands (Ledermann et al 2022)

By way of policy document analysis and expert interviews with different decision takers and interest groups at EU level (forestry, environment and climate), my research firstly asks “How is restoration for reaching climate goals perceived?” and secondly “how do the current policies relate climate-goals with restoration in the forest and land use sector?”.

The paper will contribute to disentangle the principal debates about principal trade-offs and accompanying policy mixes in the field of contested natural resources and eco-system services. Across the different documents, the understanding of “restoration” differs; likewise so along the range of stakeholder opinions. Not surprisingly, all interviewed stakeholders see the tackling of climate change as a priority. But the grounds of (scientific) understanding and argumentation are diverse. The paper disentangles those differences with outlining a classification of the principal grounds of understanding/perceptions in order to conclude with a proposal for synergetic effects of the key policy strategies involved.

How to cite: Ludvig, A.: How to tackle climate-related restoration in the forest-based sector? A focus on policy trade-offs , EGU General Assembly 2024, Vienna, Austria, 14–19 Apr 2024, EGU24-1568, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu24-1568, 2024.