Periodic Reporting for period 1 - RESONATE (Resilient forest value chains – enhancing resilience through natural and socio-economic responses)
Periodo di rendicontazione: 2021-04-01 al 2022-09-30
Climate change is a major challenge to European forests, as demonstrated by recent heat waves, extended drought periods, and numerous storms, which resulted in forest disturbances (e.g. windthrow, wildfires, insect outbreaks) of unprecedented scale and intensity. At the same time, forest biodiversity is under pressure in many regions. Forest disturbances also directly impacts society by threatening the stability and production of raw material for the forest-based sector. To mitigate increasing disturbance risks, more effort is needed in prevention, particularly by improving the resilience of European forests and associated value chains.
The overarching goal of RESONATE is to generate the needed knowledge and practices for making European forests, the services they provide, and related economic activities resilient to future climate change and disturbances. The project aims to guide decision-making towards enhancing resilience of forests and forest value chains in response to four resilience challenges: i) changing suitability of tree species due to climate change; ii) increased risks of forest disturbances; iii) changing societal demand on forest products and ecosystem services; iv) biodiversity decline.
With an integrated resilience and vulnerability assessment, RESONATE investigates how past and current site factors and management affect forest resilience in different forest types and management systems across Europe. By directly engaging with stakeholders, RESONATE assesses the social adaptability of forest owners and value chain actors to disturbances, stressors and resilience co-drivers. Scenario analysis, foresight studies, and policy analysis elaborate future-oriented response strategies to enhance forest and forest value chain resilience. RESONATE highlights and balances trade-offs in decision making and delivers user-oriented recommendations and decision support with tools including a Resilience Dashboard. Significant effort is put into making the science generated in RESONATE meaningful, understandable, and relevant for policy makers and the general public.
The overarching goal of RESONATE is to generate the needed knowledge and practices for making European forests, the services they provide, and related economic activities resilient to future climate change and disturbances. The project aims to guide decision-making towards enhancing resilience of forests and forest value chains in response to four resilience challenges: i) changing suitability of tree species due to climate change; ii) increased risks of forest disturbances; iii) changing societal demand on forest products and ecosystem services; iv) biodiversity decline.
With an integrated resilience and vulnerability assessment, RESONATE investigates how past and current site factors and management affect forest resilience in different forest types and management systems across Europe. By directly engaging with stakeholders, RESONATE assesses the social adaptability of forest owners and value chain actors to disturbances, stressors and resilience co-drivers. Scenario analysis, foresight studies, and policy analysis elaborate future-oriented response strategies to enhance forest and forest value chain resilience. RESONATE highlights and balances trade-offs in decision making and delivers user-oriented recommendations and decision support with tools including a Resilience Dashboard. Significant effort is put into making the science generated in RESONATE meaningful, understandable, and relevant for policy makers and the general public.
Much of the planned work has progressed since the beginning of RESONATE. To address fundamental aspects, RESONATE partners have collated and summarised existing metrics and indicators for measuring and reporting resilience to generate a framework to operationalise resilience in value-chains. An inventory of ecological and social-economical (value chain) resilience indicators (system variables and resilience predictors) have been catalogued through an extensive literature review. A seven-step Operational Resilience Framework has been developed as a reference to assess resilience in diverse social-ecological forest systems. Partners have reviewed numerous available modelling tools to account for disturbances, climate change, and management actions at multiple scales to assess the applicability of tools to the RESONATE Case Studies. A draft of the resilience dashboard has been prepared and discussed within the consortium.
An updated map of European forest disturbance and agent attribution has been prepared showing seven disturbance regime indicators. A Common Modelling Framework is currently being developed to evaluate resilience patterns from the modelling outputs of nine different Case Studies. A simulation approach to assess forest resilience on monospecific stands for 27 species across Europe with the Integral Projection Model has been completed, and parameters and methodology for simulating resilience for mixed stands is currently underway. A literature review on thinning effects on drought mortality has been completed and has been supplemented with data from thinning experiments. and is currently being analysed in a quantitative meta-analysis.
An econometrics analysis has been conducted in five forest-rich European countries (Austria, Czech Republic, Germany, Finland and Sweden) to assess the stability of different value chains in terms of product output volumes and service provisioning. A case study protocol has been implemented in the Case Study sites to get data to derive factors that affect value chain resilience.
Work on simulating and analysing climate change impacts on forests using 700000 simulations of existing local forest simulation models from 21 contributors in a novel neural network technique is ongoing. To address the demand from society, a conceptual frame for a demand resilience ladder has been created. Work on forest owners’ willingness, ability, and capacity to handle resilience challenges is at the initial stage. A common framework to coordinate and harmonize scenario modelling has been developed and in close collaboration with Case Study modellers. European forest resource modelling is also being developed in parallel.
Policy analyses regarding forest-based-value chains at EU and member state levels has been synthesized and visualized in a policy map.
An updated map of European forest disturbance and agent attribution has been prepared showing seven disturbance regime indicators. A Common Modelling Framework is currently being developed to evaluate resilience patterns from the modelling outputs of nine different Case Studies. A simulation approach to assess forest resilience on monospecific stands for 27 species across Europe with the Integral Projection Model has been completed, and parameters and methodology for simulating resilience for mixed stands is currently underway. A literature review on thinning effects on drought mortality has been completed and has been supplemented with data from thinning experiments. and is currently being analysed in a quantitative meta-analysis.
An econometrics analysis has been conducted in five forest-rich European countries (Austria, Czech Republic, Germany, Finland and Sweden) to assess the stability of different value chains in terms of product output volumes and service provisioning. A case study protocol has been implemented in the Case Study sites to get data to derive factors that affect value chain resilience.
Work on simulating and analysing climate change impacts on forests using 700000 simulations of existing local forest simulation models from 21 contributors in a novel neural network technique is ongoing. To address the demand from society, a conceptual frame for a demand resilience ladder has been created. Work on forest owners’ willingness, ability, and capacity to handle resilience challenges is at the initial stage. A common framework to coordinate and harmonize scenario modelling has been developed and in close collaboration with Case Study modellers. European forest resource modelling is also being developed in parallel.
Policy analyses regarding forest-based-value chains at EU and member state levels has been synthesized and visualized in a policy map.
The Operational Resilience Framework presents a novel conceptualization and unified terminology for resilience-related concepts. It allows assessing and managing forest socio-ecological systems in response to ecological and socio-economic disturbances or stressors. The Operational Resilience Framework covers eight concepts and integrates resilience from both the ecological and socio-economic points of view, based on a "what to what" perspective which identifies the relationship between system variables and resilience predictors (resilience indicators) under disturbance or stressor regimes, and the derived performance of system variables through time relative to a given reference state.
The Resilience Dashboard will provide a new, powerful tool for decision-makers to prioritize actions aiming to promote the resilience of forest socio-ecological systems.
The European Forest disturbance map has been updated and the accompanying agent attribution was improved using approx. 1,000 new reference points collected to represent the most recent large-scale natural disturbance events.
The Integral Projection Model approach and accompanying open-access R package to assess resilience in monospecific and mixed stands will be a significant development to assess biodiversity impacts as important component of resilience assessments.
The econometric analyses is a pioneering forest value chain resilience assessment approach. It is based on a combination of quantitative and qualitative analyses of data gathered from forest value chain exemplars in the Case Study regions. Upcoming work will assess the perception and current management of forest-based value chains, generating new evidence to derive which short- and long-term management options have impacted value-chain resilience.
A novel neural network approach used to project climate change and disturbance impacts on European scale is trained on a compilation of 700000 existing forest model simulations representing large parts of the European climatic space. To improve the simulation of fire disturbances, remote sensing data was analysed to calibrate statistical models for ignition and fire size.
The policy map provides a good understanding of how policy domains around forest-based value chains interact with different policy instruments related to forest resilience.
The Resilience Dashboard will provide a new, powerful tool for decision-makers to prioritize actions aiming to promote the resilience of forest socio-ecological systems.
The European Forest disturbance map has been updated and the accompanying agent attribution was improved using approx. 1,000 new reference points collected to represent the most recent large-scale natural disturbance events.
The Integral Projection Model approach and accompanying open-access R package to assess resilience in monospecific and mixed stands will be a significant development to assess biodiversity impacts as important component of resilience assessments.
The econometric analyses is a pioneering forest value chain resilience assessment approach. It is based on a combination of quantitative and qualitative analyses of data gathered from forest value chain exemplars in the Case Study regions. Upcoming work will assess the perception and current management of forest-based value chains, generating new evidence to derive which short- and long-term management options have impacted value-chain resilience.
A novel neural network approach used to project climate change and disturbance impacts on European scale is trained on a compilation of 700000 existing forest model simulations representing large parts of the European climatic space. To improve the simulation of fire disturbances, remote sensing data was analysed to calibrate statistical models for ignition and fire size.
The policy map provides a good understanding of how policy domains around forest-based value chains interact with different policy instruments related to forest resilience.