2017, Reyer, Christopher P.O., Bathgate, Stephen, Blennow, Kristina, Borges, Jose G., Bugmann, Harald, Delzon, Sylvain, Faias, Sonia P., Garcia-Gonzalo, Jordi, Gardiner, Barry, Gonzalez-Olabarria, Jose Ramon, Gracia, Carlos, Hernández, Juan Guerra, Kellomäki, Seppo, Kramer, Koen, Lexer, Manfred J., Lindner, Marcus, van der Maaten, Ernst, Maroschek, Michael, Muys, Bart, Nicoll, Bruce, Palahi, Marc, Palma, João HN, Paulo, Joana A., Peltola, Heli, Pukkala, Timo, Rammer, Werner, Ray, Duncan, Sabaté, Santiago, Schelhaas, Mart-Jan, Seidl, Rupert, Temperli, Christian, Tomé, Margarida, Yousefpour, Rasoul, Zimmermann, Niklaus E., Hanewinkel, Marc

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.

2020, Persson, Johannes, Blennow, Kristina, Gonçalves, Luísa, Borys, Alexander, Dutcă, Ioan, Hynynen, Jari, Janeczko, Emilia, Lyubenova, Mariyana, Martel, Simon, Merganic, Jan, Merganičová, Katarína, Peltoniemi, Mikko, Petr, Michal, Reboredo, Fernando H., Vacchiano, Giorgio, Reyer, Christopher P.O.

The role of values in climate-related decision-making is a prominent theme of climate communication research. The present study examines whether forest professionals are more driven by values than scientists are, and if this results in value polarization. A questionnaire was designed to elicit and assess the values assigned to expected effects of climate change by forest professionals and scientists working on forests and climate change in Europe. The countries involved covered a north-to-south and west-to-east gradient across Europe, representing a wide range of bio-climatic conditions and a mix of economic–social–political structures. We show that European forest professionals and scientists do not exhibit polarized expectations about the values of specific impacts of climate change on forests in their countries. In fact, few differences between forest professionals and scientists were found. However, there are interesting differences in the expected values of forest professionals with regard to climate change impacts across European countries. In Northern European countries, the aggregated values of the expected effects are more neutral than they are in Southern Europe, where they are more negative. Expectations about impacts on timber production, economic returns, and regulatory ecosystem services are mostly negative, while expectations about biodiversity and energy production are mostly positive.