The future of Europe’s forests faces an existential threat from climate-change-induced weather risk, especially young tree inventories across the European Union. That is according to a study that looks at the “critical young phase” of new forests across 11 EU member states, developing a model that, for the first time, can predict forest regeneration on a European-wide scale.
Published by Wageningen University & Research yesterday, Combining national forest inventories reveals the distinct role of climate on tree recruitment in European forests, tapped forest inventories in 11 EU member states to examine 95,000 forest locations and analyse how climate and weather influence forest regeneration. Crucially for long-term forest management, they developed a model to predict where tree species will grow and the type of forest that can thrive in new locations.
According to Louis König, a researcher on the project, the study provides tools to predict the future of European forests: “We can use this to guide long-term management. Management must give more space to deciduous species and mixed forests.”
König’s analysis shows that climate conditions are crucial to the success of saplings—forest rejuvenation is most successful under stable climate conditions with a lot of rain. However, this process will be much less successful in Europe, which is subject to increasingly extreme weather and temperature fluctuations—deciduous trees have the best chance of survival in slightly higher temperatures.
“The composition of young trees was very dependent on the composition of the old forest,” according to Professor Gert-Jan Nabuurs, a co-researcher on the project: “This is worrying because many European forests have only one coniferous species. Mixed forests showed more rejuvenation.”
Why English oaks could be a tree of choice in European plantations
The new research comes after Wood Central last year revealed that English oak trees could become the cornerstone of reforestation of European projects and timber plantations, with a study warning that the trees are one of the only species that can survive climate change.
Published in Nature Ecology & Evolution, A Climate-induced Tree Species Bottleneck for Forest Management in Europe, it tackles the changes to European forests expected to occur over the next 100 years. Led by Johannes Wessely and Stefan Dullinger from the University of Vienna, scientists tested 69 of the most common European tree species to see how they would react to warmer temperatures.
It found that depending on the region, one-third to half of all tree species found today will no longer be able to cope with climate change. “This is an enormous decline,” said lead author Johannes Wessely, “especially when only some species are of interest to forestry.”
According to Wessely, while Europe is home to a mix of native tree species, its population is comparatively lower than that of North America and East Asia—a situation that must change if European forest inventories are going to thrive in the face of climate change.
“Mixed forests consisting of many tree species are important to make forests more robust against disturbances such as bark beetles,” according to study co-author Rupert Seidl from the Technical University of Munich in Germany. However, “in some European places, we could run out of tree species to establish such colourful mixed forests.”
