Abstract
Recent studies projecting future climate change impacts on forests mainly consider either the effects of climate change on productivity or on disturbances. However, productivity and disturbances are intrinsically linked because 1) disturbances directly affect forest productivity (e.g. via a reduction in leaf area, growing stock or resource-use efficiency), and 2) disturbance susceptibility is often coupled to a certain development phase of the forest with productivity determining the time a forest is in this specific phase of susceptibility. The objective of this paper is to provide an overview of forest productivity changes in different forest regions in Europe under climate change, and partition these changes into effects induced by climate change alone and by climate change and disturbances. We present projections of climate change impacts on forest productivity from state-of-the-art forest models that dynamically simulate forest productivity and the effects of the main European disturbance agents (fire, storm, insects), driven by the same climate scenario in seven forest case studies along a large climatic gradient throughout Europe. Our study shows that, in most cases, including disturbances in the simulations exaggerate ongoing productivity declines or cancel out productivity gains in response to climate change. In fewer cases, disturbances also increase productivity or buffer climate-change induced productivity losses, e.g. because low severity fires can alleviate resource competition and increase fertilization. Even though our results cannot simply be extrapolated to other types of forests and disturbances, we argue that it is necessary to interpret climate change-induced productivity and disturbance changes jointly to capture the full range of climate change impacts on forests and to plan adaptation measures.
Highlights
In the 20th century, forest productivity in Europe has increased (Spiecker et al 1996, Boisvenue and Running 2006)
Productivity and disturbances are intrinsically linked because 1) disturbances directly affect forest productivity, and 2) disturbance susceptibility is often coupled to a certain development phase of the forest with productivity determining the time a forest is in this specific phase of susceptibility
The objective of this paper is to provide an overview of forest productivity changes in different forest regions in Europe under climate change, and partition these changes into effects induced by climate change alone and by climate change and disturbances
Summary
In the 20th century, forest productivity in Europe has increased (Spiecker et al 1996, Boisvenue and Running 2006). With a few, recent exceptions (e.g. Zubizareta Gerendiain et al 2017) most studies projecting future climate change impacts on forests usually only consider either the effects of climate change on productivity (e.g. Kellomäki et al 2008, Wamelink et al 2009, Reyer et al 2014, Reyer 2015) or on disturbances (e.g. Jönsson et al 2009, Bentz et al 2010, Westerling et al 2011, Subramanian et al 2015) Both forest productivity and susceptibility to disturbances change dynamically over forest development as affected by environmental (climate, site) conditions (Urban et al 1987, Gower et al 1996, Ryan et al 1997, Netherer and Nopp-Mayr 2005, Peltola et al 2010, Thom et al 2013, Hart et al 2015). In managed, even-aged forests, younger, denser forest stands are more susceptible to forest fires (González et al 2007, Botequim et al 2013, Marques et al 2012)
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