Introduction
Adaptation and increased resilience of forests is essential for the forests to maintain their function as carbon sinks, to protect existing stocks and to ensure that forests will continue to provide important ecosystem services and to support the forest-based bioeconomy. Due to the high variation of European and Chinese forests, diversity of landscapes as well as governance and ownership structures, adaptation strategies need to be adapted to regional conditions and circumstances, with focus on the most vulnerable forests in climate change hotspots.
Scope
– Strengthened international cooperation with actors from China in the areas of forest adaptation to climate change
– Comprehensive knowledge base on the impact of climate change on forests and their capacity to adapt
– Increased adaptation efforts in climate change hotspots in the EU/associated countries (mountains, Mediterranean, Northern Scandinavian Peninsula, Central and Eastern Europe, outermost regions) and China
– Informed decision-making by forest managers adopting sustainable forest management practices.
– Knowledge transfer and capacity building at science-policy-practice interface.
Objectives
– Develop and refine projections at regional scale, improve the modelling of effects on natural vegetation, both at individual and ecosystem level and support science-based decisions with a view to the sustainable management of forests, including activities related to afforestation, reforestation and regeneration.
– Design adaptation plans to increase the resilience of forests by active management of the species composition and the genetic diversity within these species (including through assisted species migration, and forest regeneration and afforestation with species already adapted and / or further improved to tolerate or even benefit from future climate conditions) while supporting forest production and ecosystem services under climate change in the various regions and forest types of Europe.
– Analyse socio-economic aspects of forest adaptation, including forest managers’ and users’ perception and factors influencing their decision making such as consumer choices, sectorial integration and international/domestic competition and analyse the potential of incentives and tools to reach forest managers and to encourage changes towards preventive strategies/measures by taking into account the different forms of forest governance and ownership.
