Spatial Pattern of Climate Change Effects on Lithuanian Forestry

Abstract

Research Highlights: Validating modelling approach which combines global framework conditions in the form of climate and policy scenarios with the use of forest decision support system to assess climate change impacts on the sustainability of forest management. Background and Objectives: Forests and forestry have been confirmed to be sensitive to climate. On the other hand, human efforts to mitigate climate change influence forests and forest management. To facilitate the evaluation of future sustainability of forest management, decision support systems are applied. Our aims are to: (1) Adopt and validate decision support tool to incorporate climate change and its mitigation impacts on forest growth, global timber demands and prices for simulating future trends of forest ecosystem services in Lithuania, (2) determine the magnitude and spatial patterns of climate change effects on Lithuanian forests and forest management in the future, supposing that current forestry practices are continued. Materials and Methods: Upgraded version of Lithuanian forestry simulator Kupolis was used to model the development of all forests in the country until 2120 under management conditions of three climate change scenarios. Selected stand-level forest and forest management characteristics were aggregated to the level of regional branches of the State Forest Enterprise and analyzed for the spatial and temporal patterns of climate change effects. Results: Increased forest growth under a warmer future climate resulted in larger tree dimensions, volumes of growing stock, naturally dying trees, harvested assortments, and also higher profits from forestry activities. Negative impacts were detected for the share of broadleaved tree species in the standing volume and the tree species diversity. Climate change effects resulted in spatially clustered patterns-increasing stand productivity, and amounts of harvested timber were concentrated in the regions with dominating coniferous species, while the same areas were exposed to negative dynamics of biodiversity-related forest attributes. Current forest characteristics explained 70% or more of the variance of climate change effects on key forest and forest management attributes. Conclusions: Using forest decision support systems, climate change scenarios and considering the balance of delivered ecosystem services is suggested as a methodological framework for validating forest management alternatives aiming for more adaptiveness in Lithuanian forestry.

Evaluating the Impact of Future Global Climate Change and Bioeconomy Scenarios on Ecosystem Services Using a Strategic Forest Management Decision Support System

“…Determining the exact impact of external factors on ES indicators by comparing scenarios is difficult. Forest management in the scenarios differed as a response to the external factors and the largest impact on ESs was the level of clearfelling in the scenarios, which was mainly determined by the dynamic timber prices (Lundholm et al, 2019), a finding also confirmed using the same global scenario narratives in Lithuania (Mozgeris et al, 2019). Some correlations were found, where the greatest clearfell area (in the S3 scenario) resulted in more P emissions (which reduced water quality), and reductions in the area at windthrow risk, cumulative carbon storage, biodiversity indicators and RAFL-index.…”

“…Analyzing the long-term impacts of various global development scenarios on forest management approaches and forest ESs is crucial to avoid negative outcomes and conflicts between stakeholders. The ALTERFOR project is a collaboration between 9 countries (Germany, Ireland, Italy, Lithuania, The Netherlands, Portugal, Slovakia, Sweden, and Turkey; Marques et al, 2017;Marto et al, 2018;Schwaiger et al, 2018Schwaiger et al, , 2019Mozgeris et al, 2019;Nordström et al, 2019) that investigates the suitability of FMDSSs to analyse the complex dynamic interactions between climate change, global markets, and forest management practices to assess the suitability of current and alternative forest management systems to address future challenges and provide society with an optimal mix of ESs. Standardized ES indicators have been implemented in nine different FMDSSs to allow for comparisons across European landscapes and facilitated the large-scale analysis of long-term climate change and bioeconomy impacts on the provision of forest ESs in Europe (Nordström et al, 2019).…”

The Impacts of Calamity Logging on the Development of Spruce Wood Prices in Czech Forestry

“…These countries are the main producers of raw timber, as well as large importers of harvested timber from the Czech Republic. The price of spruce wood thus depends not only on the volume of mining, but also on the technological capacities of the processing countries [35][36][37]. The technological capacities of Austria and Germany are close to 100%; therefore, further development depends on the ability and willingness of these countries to harvest raw timber in the Czech Republic.…”

Management of Multiple Ecosystem Services under Climate Change, Bioeconomy and Participation

“…Mozgeris et al [21] investigated climate change and its impacts on the sustainability of forest management (forest growth, global timber demands and prices) in a Lithuanian forest ecosystem with three climate change scenarios using an in-house forest simulator called Kupolis. Because the case study area is in the Northern hemisphere, a warmer climate change effect is found to increase tree size, stand productivity, and growing stock, resulting in higher profits yet negative dynamics of biodiversity (decrease broadleaf cover and tree species diversity).…”