Future ecosystem services from European mountain forests under climate change

Abstract

1. Ecosystem services (ES) from mountain forests are highly relevant for human societies. ES with a direct economic support function (e.g. timber production), regulatory services (e.g. protection from natural hazards) and cultural services (e.g. recreation) are likely to be affected strongly by a rapidly changing climate. To evaluate whether adverse climate change effects on ES can be counteracted by adapting management, dynamic models and indicatorbased assessments are needed. 2. We applied a forest dynamic model in case study areas of four European mountain regions and evaluated the future supply of four EStimber production, carbon sequestration, biodiversity and protection against natural hazardsusing state-of-the-art ES indicators. Forest dynamics were simulated under three management scenarios (no management, business-as-usual and alternative management) and five climate change projections for selected representative stand types in each region. We analysed potential trade-offs and synergies between ES and evaluated future changes among regions, forest stands, climate and management scenarios. 3. Impacts of climate change on the provision of multiple ES were found to be highly heterogeneous and to depend on the region, site and future climate. In the absence of large-scale natural disturbance (not considered), protection services, carbon stock and deadwood abundance (proxy for biodiversity) benefitted from no management in all regions. Negative impacts of climate change were evident for the provision of multiple ES but limited to the most severe climate scenarios and low-elevation stands. Synergies and trade-offs between the majority of ES were found to be sensitive to the choice of management strategy andin some regionsto climate change. 4. Synthesis and applications. Management regimes in European mountain forests should be regionally adapted to stand and site conditions. Although in some cases alternative management regimes may be more suitable than current management for supporting multiple ecosystem services, adaptation options should be evaluated carefully at the local scale due to the highly different magnitude of the impacts of climate change in different regions and along elevation gradients.

Trade‐offs between temporal stability and level of forest ecosystem services provisioning under climate change

“…In other words, achieving a temporally stable and maximum ES supply will often not be simultaneously possible in ecosystem management. It is thus important that studies optimizing ES supply (Diaz-Balteiro et al 2017, Mina et al 2017) increasingly account not only for the level of ES provisioning but also for its temporal stability (for example by introducing minimum levels of ES provisioning required, cf. H€ artl et al 2016).…”

“…In the context of a comprehensive consideration of uncertainties in ecosystem service assessments (Runting et al 2017), it is of interest whether management strategies can be developed that simultaneously achieve high stability and a high level of ecosystem services provisioning. While many recent studies have investigated the role of forest management in providing multiple ecosystem services under climate change, as well as dealing with trade-offs between individual services (Temperli et al 2012, Creutzburg et al 2017, Mina et al 2017, the question of whether stability of ecosystem service provisioning comes at the expense of the level of service provisioning has, to our knowledge, not yet been investigated.…”

Multiple factors modulate tree growth complementarity in Central European mixed forests

“…Forests with a higher structural and species diversity may also be more resistant and resilient to biotic and abiotic disturbances (Jactel & Brockerhoff, 2007;Seidl, Spies, Peterson, Stephens, & Hicke, 2016). Thus, identifying the conditions under which diversity and species composition positively influence productivity is critical in the context of adapting forest management and conservation to changing environmental conditions (Ammer, 2017;Mina, Bugmann, et al, 2017;Nabuurs et al, 2013).…”

Tree growth is more sensitive than species distributions to recent changes in climate and acidic deposition in the northeastern United States

“…Despite some documented upslope shifts in plant distributions, evidence of widespread climate driven change is mixed (e.g. Foster & D'Amato 2015) presenting a challenge for forest management decisions and for predicting forest ecosystem services (Mina et al 2016). Tree ranges may not track climate perfectly due to other environmental change factors such as air pollution (Driscoll et al 2001), land management (Rasche et al 2011;Wason & Dovciak 2016) or species migration lags (Zhu, Woodall & Clark 2012).…”