Climate proofing future forest management

Project Information

CLIMPRO

Grant agreement ID: 895455

DOI

10.3030/895455

Project closed

EC signature date 23 March 2020

Start date 1 November 2020

End date 31 October 2022

Funded under

• EXCELLENT SCIENCE - Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions

Total cost

€ 166 320,00

EU contribution

€ 166 320,00

Coordinated by

UNIVERSITEIT ANTWERPEN
Belgium

Periodic Reporting for period 1 - CLIMPRO (Climate proofing future forest management)

Reporting period: 2020-11-01 to 2022-10-31

Summary of the context and overall objectives of the project

Forests have been managed, since pre-Roman times, for the provision of food, building material and fuel. Today, forests produce wood for construction and energy, and pulp for paper production and chemical
transformation. In addition, forests are recognized to provide a variety of ecosystem services such as an environment for recreation, sanctuaries for biodiversity, preventing soil erosion and regulating water infiltration. Since
the Kyoto Protocol, carbon-sequestration and ultimately climate change mitigation have become prominent forest-based ecosystem services. Consequently, 70% of global forests are now under some form of management.
These forests provide the equivalent of over US$3,000 per hectare per year in ecosystem services4. Under severe climate change, which now seems likely to occur, the value of forests, could drastically decrease.
Hence, in the light of ongoing climate change, new forest management systems need to be applied to sustain the provision of forest-based ecosystem services without scarifying forest productivity.
Fnally the main goal of CLIMPRO is to quantify how adaptive management can affect the provision of ecosystem services, focusing on wood production, river runoff and climate change mitigation.
The study will enhance our understanding of how adaptive management can contribute to climate change mitigation or, on the contrary, may exacerbate climate change while sustaining forest-based ecosystem services.

Work performed from the beginning of the project to the end of the period covered by the report and main results achieved so far

The beneficiaries implemented the back beetle outbreak module and made it fully operational by harmonising mortality rate from other sources of mortality (storm, background). The beneficiaries carried out a comprehensive qualitative evaluation of the new bark beetle outbreak module included in ORCHIDEE and they obtained satisfactory results from this evaluation. Nonetheless WP 2 was much more demanding in workload than expected which reduced the time spent on WP1 and 3. In WP1, the beneficiaries investigated how to include multi-strata canopy and continuous cover forestry and found promising solutions. Even if the WP3 has not been finished, thanks to the collaboration of others projects (HoliSoils, DIPROG), simulation experiments have been set-up with various dataset to initialise simulations with a realistic representation of forest structure across Europe and an accurate reconstruction of the main storms and its consequences on forest dieback that hit Europe in the last 40 years.

Progress beyond the state of the art and expected potential impact (including the socio-economic impact and the wider societal implications of the project so far)

The impact of such a study will be wider than the scientific area and may interest forest managers, policy makers, and public authorities. Bark beetle outbreaks are considered as one of the most important natural disturbances across the world, thanks to the work carried out during CLIMPRO, we are getting closer to include such event into account while simulating the forest feedback to climate change.

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