Forest management strategies in the context of potential climate change | Waldbaustrategien im Kontext möglicher Klimaänderungen
1999
Lindner, Marcus
In forest management there is frequently the need to make decisions with long-term consequences. Forests which are planted today may be exposed to a quite different climate within 50 to 100 years. To date, very few investigations have analysed the impacts of the projected climate changes in managed forests. Consequently there is a need for improved decision support for the development of forest management strategies in the context of global change.This paper analyses how different forest management strategies influence the adaptation of forest stands to changing environmental conditions. Furthermore, a simulation model was applied to demonstrate the strong influence of management on forest development within the next 110 years under current climate conditions and under a scenario of climate change. The simulation results for a forestry district in northeastern Germany showed that, in all investigated scenarios, climate change affected forest composition and productivity. However, there were also distinct differences between the simulated management strategies. Whereas a conservative management strategy resulted in relatively small changes in simulated species composition but in a strong decrease in productivity between present climate and climate change scenario, an adaptive forest management strategy was able to partly mitigate the reduction in productivity by means of a shift to more drought tolerant tree species. It is concluded that the simulation results of the extended forest gap model with forest management routines provide opportunities to evaluate and optimize forest management strategies for the adaptation of forest stands to changing climatic conditions.
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