The impact of future forest disturbances on the European forest carbon sink, stock and wood production

European forests have been subject to increasingly severe disturbances over recent years, particularly with respect to bark beetle outbreaks and fires. The occurrence of such disturbances will likely increase with intensifying climate change, impacting the services that forests provide including climate change mitigation and wood production. Disturbances events are, however, challenging to simulate, which means that possible changes in disturbances rates have been generally excluded from future projections of European forest dynamics. Here we draw on recent developments in the LPJ-GUESS dynamic vegetation model, allowing to simulate bark beetle outbreak, windthrow and fire at the European scale. We initialise LPJ-GUESS with observations of forest stand age and species composition from field and remotely-sensed data. Then we make projections of European forest dynamics over the period 2025–2100 under both strong and moderate climate change scenarios. Consideration of disturbances had locally substantial effects on the carbon sink, biomass stock and harvest extractions, but the effect averaged over the whole continent was relatively modest. Adaptation actions related to modifications of harvest rates, such as shortening or lengthening rotation periods, tended to impact forest dynamics more through their direct effects on harvest than through their interactions with disturbance impacts. Overall, it is harvest actions, not disturbances, which appear to primarily govern the future of the European forest.