Tackling climate change—the contribution of scientific knowledge in forestry

Abstract

Climate change is one of the major challenges forestry is facing in the twenty-first century and beyond. Forests, as long-living ecosystems that cover large areas of the landmass of the world, will be particularly affected by the projected climate change. Major issues with respect to climate change related to forests and forestry are shifts in the distribution range of the most important tree species, an increase of extreme climate events resulting in a different regime of biotic and abiotic disturbances, changes in the productivity of forest ecosystems, and, more generally, a change in the goods and services forests are able to provide to society. This may affect biodiversity as well as the ability of forests to sequester carbon and to emit greenhouse gas. Furthermore, the potential loss of productive species due to the expected increase in temperature and decrease of precipitation, as projected for larger areas in Europe, may lead to strong economic losses that can affect forest owners as well as the whole timber industry (Hanewinkel et al. 2013). In order to tackle the multiple problems that forest management is facing, sound adaptation strategies are needed. They include the choice and spatial organisation of species as well as genetically adapted provenances and management strategies that prepare forests to deal with increasing drought, pests and diseases and abiotic hazards such as fire and storm. Apart from adaptation, forestry has to ensure that the ability of forests to mitigate climate change by forming a stable sink for carbon and limiting the emission of greenhouse gas is maintained. This is a task that often requires activities on a political level as well as an outreach to forest owners and stakeholders. Within this framework, the international conference “Tackling Climate Change—the contribution of forest scientific knowledge” took place in May 2012 in Tours, France. It delivered the background for this special issue of “Annals of Forest Science.” The conference was organized by the coordinators of a number of climate-related research projects and COST actions funded under the seventh framework program of the European Union (ECHOES, MOTIVE, BACCARA, TRANZFOR, ForEAdapt, REINFFORCE) under the lead of the COST action FP 703 ECHOES (chaired by J.L. Peyron). Over 300 participants discussed in plenary and parallel session scientific papers, of which a selection is presented here. The contributions of this issue cover a range of the most important topics related to climate change. The question of changing species under climate change is an important topic. Hernandez et al. (2014) show that species like European beech and Scots pine may even enlarge their ranges in mountain areas and move upwards. Bolte et al. (2014) point out that understory dynamics can play a key role for forest succession from spruceto beech-dominated forests. The potential economic effects of species changes and how to deal with them are analysed by Brunette et al. (2014). They present an option value approach to support the decision when to change a tree species and they point at the necessity to integrate species like Douglas fir (Pseudotsuga menziesii) in further considerations about tree species under climate change. Meason and Mason (2014) emphasize the necessity to deploy alternative tree species under climate change. They show, based on two case studies in two different continents, Handling Editor: Erwin Dreyer