Protective functions and ecosystem services of global forests in the past quarter-century

AbstractThe world’s forests provide fundamental protection of soil and water resources as well as multiple ecosystem services and cultural or spiritual values. We summarized the FRA 2015 data for protective functions and ecosystem services, and analyzed increasing or decreasing trends of protective areas. The global forest area managed for protection of soil and water was 1.002billionha as of 2015, which was 25.1% of all global forested areas. Protective forests have increased by 0.181billionha over the past 25years mainly because more countries are now reporting protective forest areas (139 in 2015 vs 114 in 1990). However, average percentage of designated for protective forests did not change significantly from 1990 to 2015. Global forest area managed for ecosystem services is also now at 25.4% of global total forest area and has changed little over the past 25years. Among the twelve categories of protective forests, flood control, public recreation, and cultural services increased both in terms of percentage of total forest area and the number of reporting countries. Public awareness of the importance of forest resources for functions and services other than production continues to increase as evidenced by the increase of protective forest designations and reporting in many countries. Percentages of total forest area designated for both protective forests and ecosystem services show a dual-peak distribution of numbers of countries concentrated at 0% and 100%. This suggests a socio-economic influence for the designations. We examined five case study countries (Australia, Canada, China, Kenya, and Russia). The most dramatic changes in the past 25years have been in China where protective forests for soil and water resources increased from about 12% to 28% of forest area. The Russian Federation has also increased percentages of forest area devoted to soil and water resource protection and delivery of ecosystem services. Australia is now reporting in more protective forest categories whereas Kenya and Canada changed little. These five countries have their own classification of forest functions and recalculation methods of reporting for FRA 2015 were different. This demonstrates the difficulty in establishing a universal common designation scheme for multi-functions of forest. Production of more accurate assessments by further improvements in the reporting framework and data quality would help advance the value of FRA as the unique global database for forest functions integrated between forest ecosystems and social sciences

towards integrating risk dimensions

Costa, H., de Rigo, D., Libertà, G., Houston Durrant, T., San-Miguel-Ayanz, J., 2020. European wildfire danger and vulnerability in a changing climate: towards integrating risk dimensions. Publications Office of the European Union, Luxembourg, 59 pp. ISBN:978-92-76-16898-0 , https://doi.org/10.2760/46951This research focuses on European wildfire danger and vulnerability under a changing climate, to support the integration of some main climate-related components of wildfire risk. A detailed assessment is proposed on the varying frequency of fire danger classes (from the relatively safer to the extreme danger conditions) under changing climate. On a given area, the co-occurrence of an increasing number of high-danger days, and the presence of people potentially exposed to wildfires, and living within the more vulnerable interface between settlements and wildland, indicates an increasing fire risk. Focusing on the population potentially exposed to wildfires in Europe, the interface between urban areas and wildland (WUI) is here identified as an indicator of where the people are more vulnerable, both due to the easier ignition of areas where people can have an easier access to wildland, and due to a passive consequence of the increased risk. Once a given fire is ignited close to the WUI, neighbour locations are also threatened. In addition, summary indices of potential vegetation vulnerability are introduced to account not only for single species vulnerability, but rather for the combined multifaceted impacts on vegetation structure and composition following the definition of ecological domains by FAO and estimating their potential shift under different climate-change scenarios. An integrated assessment of the findings supports a recommendation to focus on the Mediterranean areas of Europe characterised by higher potential vegetation and population vulnerability, and higher potential fire danger. In addition, attention may be necessary to specific mountain areas (even outside the Mediterranean) especially on lower elevation areas where forests are dominant and more vulnerable to a rapidly changing ecology, and land abandonment may worsen the vegetation fuel and the WUI interface for the remaining population.publishersversionpublishe

Robust modelling of the impacts of climate change on the habitat suitability of forest tree species

In Europe, forests play a strategic multifunctional role, serving economic, social and environmental purposes. However, forests are among the most complex systems and their interaction with the ongoing climate change – and the multifaceted chain of potential cascading consequences for European biodiversity, environment, society and economy – is not yet well understood. The JRC PESETA project series proposes a consistent multi-sectoral assessment of the impacts of climate change in Europe. Within the PESETA II project, a robust methodology is introduced for modelling the habitat suitability of forest tree species (2071-2100 time horizon). Abies alba (the silver fir) is selected as a case study: a main European tree species often distributed in bioclimatically complex areas, spanning over various forest types and with multiple populations adapted to different conditions. The modular modelling architecture is based on relative distance similarity (RDS) estimates which link field observations with bioclimatic patterns, projecting their change under climate scenarios into the expected potential change of suitable habitat for tree species. Robust management of uncertainty is also examined. Both technical and interpretation core aspects are presented in an integrated overview. The semantics of the array of quantities under focus and the uneven sources of uncertainty at the continental scale are discussed (following the semantic array programming paradigm), with an effort to offer some minimal guidance on terminology, meaning and methodological limitations not only of the proposed approach, but also of the broad available literature – whose heterogeneity and partial ambiguity might potentially reverberate at the science-policy interface. ► How to cite: ◄ de Rigo, D., Caudullo, G., San-Miguel-Ayanz, J, Barredo, J.I., 2017. Robust modelling of the impacts of climate change on the habitat suitability of forest tree species. Publication Office of the European Union, Luxembourg. 58 pp. ISBN:978-92-79-66704-6 , https://doi.org/10.2760/29650

Robust modelling of the impacts of climate change on the habitat suitability of forest tree species

In Europe, forests play a strategic multifunctional role, serving economic, social and environmental purposes. However, forests are among the most complex systems and their interaction with the ongoing climate change – and the multifaceted chain of potential cascading consequences for European biodiversity, environment, society and economy – is not yet well understood. The JRC PESETA project series proposes a consistent multi-sectoral assessment of the impacts of climate change in Europe. Within the PESETA II project, a robust methodology is introduced for modelling the habitat suitability of forest tree species (2071-2100 time horizon). Abies alba (the silver fir) is selected as a case study: a main European tree species often distributed in bioclimatically complex areas, spanning over various forest types and with multiple populations adapted to different conditions. The modular modelling architecture is based on relative distance similarity (RDS) estimates which link field observations with bioclimatic patterns, projecting their change under climate scenarios into the expected potential change of suitable habitat for tree species. Robust management of uncertainty is also examined. Both technical and interpretation core aspects are presented in an integrated overview. The semantics of the array of quantities under focus and the uneven sources of uncertainty at the continental scale are discussed (following the semantic array programming paradigm), with an effort to offer some minimal guidance on terminology, meaning and methodological limitations not only of the proposed approach, but also of the broad available literature – whose heterogeneity and partial ambiguity might potentially reverberate at the science-policy interface. ► How to cite: ◄ de Rigo, D., Caudullo, G., San-Miguel-Ayanz, J, Barredo, J.I., 2017. Robust modelling of the impacts of climate change on the habitat suitability of forest tree species. Publication Office of the European Union, Luxembourg. 58 pp. ISBN:978-92-79-66704-6 , https://doi.org/10.2760/29650

Evaluation of CMIP6 model performances in simulating fire weather spatiotemporal variability on global and regional scales

Weather and climate play an important role in shaping global wildfire regimes and geographical distributions of burnable area. As projected by the Sixth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC-AR6), in the near future, fire danger is likely to increase in many regions due to warmer temperatures and drier conditions. General Circulation Models (GCMs) are an important resource in understanding how fire danger will evolve in a changing climate but, to date, the development of fire risk scenarios has not fully accounted for systematic GCM errors and biases. This study presents a comprehensive global evaluation of the spatiotemporal representation of fire weather indicators from the Canadian Forest Fire Weather Index System simulated by 16 GCMs from the 6th Coupled Model Intercomparison Project (CMIP6). While at the global scale, the ensemble mean is able to represent variability, magnitude and spatial extent of different fire weather indicators reasonably well when compared to the latest global fire reanalysis, there is considerable regional and seasonal dependence in the performance of each GCM. To support the GCM selection and application for impact studies, the evaluation results are combined to generate global and regional rankings of individual GCM performance. The findings highlight the value of GCM evaluation and selection in developing more reliable projections of future climate-driven fire danger, thereby enabling decision makers and forest managers to take targeted action and respond to future fire events.</p

Modifying harvesting time as a tool to reduce nutrient export by timber extraction: a case study in planted teak (Tectona grandis L.f.) forests in Costa Rica

Despite its low nutrient concentration, the high amount of biomass accumulated in the tree stem makes it an important nutrient sink. Hence, nutrient loss through timber removal at harvesting is a major cause of nutrient impoverishment at some forest sites. The present study was designed to test the following hypotheses: (a) nutrient allocation in the different tree tissues would be affected by (re)translocation processes related with leaf senescence; hence, (b) timber may have a higher nutrient concentration during the defoliated period (in deciduous species); and consequently, (c) modifying harvesting time could influence nutrient export. To test these hypotheses, the present study analyzes the intra-annual dynamics of foliar and trunk nutrient concentration in a planted teak (Tectona grandis L.f.) forest in Costa Rica. Samples from nine trees were taken at nine sampling times between June 2012 and August 2013. The results confirm the above-mentioned hypotheses and reveal that modifying harvesting time have different consequences: (1) when harvesting occurs between August and October, it reduces the N-P-K exported through timber harvesting by 24-29-43%; (2) when harvesting occurs in December, the reduction is 28-29-14%. Harvesting between August and October (rainy season) may involve logistical difficulties. Harvesting slightly earlier than usual (i.e., December, just after the rainy season but before leaf senescence) would therefore be an efficient approach to reducing nutrient export through timber extraction.Agencia Española de Cooperación Internacional para el Desarrollo/[]/AECID/EspañaUCR::Vicerrectoría de Investigación::Unidades de Investigación::Ciencias Agroalimentarias::Centro de Investigaciones Agronómicas (CIA

Free and open source software underpinning the european forest data centre

Excerpt: Worldwide, governments are growingly focusing on free and open source software (FOSS) as a move toward transparency and the freedom to run, copy, study, change and improve the software. The European Commission (EC) is also supporting the development of FOSS [...]. In addition to the financial savings, FOSS contributes to scientific knowledge freedom in computational science (CS) and is increasingly rewarded in the science-policy interface within the emerging paradigm of open science. Since complex computational science applications may be affected by software uncertainty, FOSS may help to mitigate part of the impact of software errors by CS community- driven open review, correction and evolution of scientific code. The continental scale of EC science-based policy support implies wide networks of scientific collaboration. Thematic information systems also may benefit from this approach within reproducible integrated modelling. This is supported by the EC strategy on FOSS: "for the development of new information systems, where deployment is foreseen by parties outside of the EC infrastructure, [F]OSS will be the preferred choice and in any case used whenever possible". The aim of this contribution is to highlight how a continental scale information system may exploit and integrate FOSS technologies within the transdisciplinary research underpinning such a complex system. A European example is discussed where FOSS innervates both the structure of the information system itself and the inherent transdisciplinary research for modelling the data and information which constitute the system content. [...

Free and open source software underpinning the european forest data centre

Excerpt: Worldwide, governments are growingly focusing on free and open source software (FOSS) as a move toward transparency and the freedom to run, copy, study, change and improve the software. The European Commission (EC) is also supporting the development of FOSS [...]. In addition to the financial savings, FOSS contributes to scientific knowledge freedom in computational science (CS) and is increasingly rewarded in the science-policy interface within the emerging paradigm of open science. Since complex computational science applications may be affected by software uncertainty, FOSS may help to mitigate part of the impact of software errors by CS community- driven open review, correction and evolution of scientific code. The continental scale of EC science-based policy support implies wide networks of scientific collaboration. Thematic information systems also may benefit from this approach within reproducible integrated modelling. This is supported by the EC strategy on FOSS: "for the development of new information systems, where deployment is foreseen by parties outside of the EC infrastructure, [F]OSS will be the preferred choice and in any case used whenever possible". The aim of this contribution is to highlight how a continental scale information system may exploit and integrate FOSS technologies within the transdisciplinary research underpinning such a complex system. A European example is discussed where FOSS innervates both the structure of the information system itself and the inherent transdisciplinary research for modelling the data and information which constitute the system content. [...