Significant increase in natural disturbance impacts on European forests since 1950

Result code in IS VaVaI

<a href="https://www.isvavai.cz/riv?ss=detail&h=RIV%2F62156489%3A43410%2F23%3A43922606" target="_blank" >RIV/62156489:43410/23:43922606 - isvavai.cz</a>

Alternative codes found

RIV/60460709:41320/23:94335

Result on the web

<a href="https://doi.org/10.1111/gcb.16531" target="_blank" >https://doi.org/10.1111/gcb.16531</a>

DOI - Digital Object Identifier

<a href="http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/gcb.16531" target="_blank" >10.1111/gcb.16531</a>

Result language

angličtina

Original language name

Significant increase in natural disturbance impacts on European forests since 1950

Original language description

Over the last decades, the natural disturbance is increasingly putting pressure on European forests. Shifts in disturbance regimes may compromise forest functioning and the continuous provisioning of ecosystem services to society, including their climate change mitigation potential. Although forests are central to many European policies, we lack the long-term empirical data needed for thoroughly understanding disturbance dynamics, modeling them, and developing adaptive management strategies. Here, we present a unique database of &gt;170,000 records of ground-based natural disturbance observations in European forests from 1950 to 2019. Reported data confirm a significant increase in forest disturbance in 34 European countries, causing on an average of 43.8 million m3 of disturbed timber volume per year over the 70-year study period. This value is likely a conservative estimate due to under-reporting, especially of small-scale disturbances. We used machine learning techniques for assessing the magnitude of unreported disturbances, which are estimated to be between 8.6 and 18.3 million m3/year. In the last 20 years, disturbances on average accounted for 16% of the mean annual harvest in Europe. Wind was the most important disturbance agent over the study period (46% of total damage), followed by fire (24%) and bark beetles (17%). Bark beetle disturbance doubled its share of the total damage in the last 20 years. Forest disturbances can profoundly impact ecosystem services (e.g., climate change mitigation), affect regional forest resource provisioning and consequently disrupt long-term management planning objectives and timber markets. We conclude that adaptation to changing disturbance regimes must be placed at the core of the European forest management and policy debate. Furthermore, a coherent and homogeneous monitoring system of natural disturbances is urgently needed in Europe, to better observe and respond to the ongoing changes in forest disturbance regimes.

Czech name

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Czech description

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Type

J_imp - Article in a specialist periodical, which is included in the Web of Science database

CEP classification

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OECD FORD branch

40102 - Forestry

Project

—

Continuities

I - Institucionalni podpora na dlouhodoby koncepcni rozvoj vyzkumne organizace

Publication year

2023

Confidentiality

S - Úplné a pravdivé údaje o projektu nepodléhají ochraně podle zvláštních právních předpisů

Name of the periodical

Global Change Biology

ISSN

1354-1013

e-ISSN

1365-2486

Volume of the periodical

29

Issue of the periodical within the volume

5

Country of publishing house

US - UNITED STATES

Number of pages

18

Pages from-to

1359-1376

UT code for WoS article

000897576500001

EID of the result in the Scopus database

2-s2.0-85144099824