Global climate change impacts on forests and markets

Abstract

This paper examines how foresters have adapted to important supply and demand driven shocks in the last century that affected timber prices and forest investments. Many of the adaptations that foresters made to changing economic conditions will be the same types of adaptations that society will need foresters to make in the future in order to adapt to climate change. These include changing rotation ages to adapt to shifting disturbance conditions, increasing intensification of management in response to dwindling old growth stocks, movement of species across regions to find better growing conditions, among other things. The paper presents results of an integrated assessment of climate change impacts in forestry and shows how projected future changes for the next century are well within the historical context.