Assisted tree migration can reduce but not avert the decline of forest ecosystem services in Europe

European forests are facing multiple natural and anthropogenic pressures which are expected to become more severe in the next decades. Tree diversity is projected to decline in many areas across the continent. How this will affect the provision of forest services remains an open question, whose answer depends, among others, on the practical and theoretical challenges of incorporating assisted migration into climate adaptation strategies. Here, we tackle the issue by combining a large dataset of tree species occurrences, future climatic projections, and data on tree functional traits and tree-specific forest services into an innovative modelling approach. To aid management in counterbalancing the loss of services, we introduce a suite of assisted migration strategies aimed at identifying, for each locality, the tree species communities offering the best compromise in terms of resilience to climate change and delivery of ecosystem services. Such strategies could reduce service losses by 10% (15%) on average in Europe and even increase service availability in the Alpine and Boreal regions, but not in the Mediterranean where losses, although mitigated by our approach, will remain as high as 33% (54% for RCP 8.5). Our findings highlight how science-driven management strategies could be vital to counteract otherwise dramatic, European-wide losses of forest services.

MAURI Achille;  GIRARDELLO Marco;  FORZIERI Giovanni;  MANCA Federica;  BECK Pieter;  CESCATTI Alessandro;  STRONA Giovanni; 

2023-05-02

ELSEVIER SCI LTD

JRC131471

0959-3780 (online),   

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0959378023000420,    https://publications.jrc.ec.europa.eu/repository/handle/JRC131471,   

10.1016/j.gloenvcha.2023.102676 (online),