Europe's forests face doubling of wildfires, storms, and pest outbreaks by 2100
A new continental-scale simulation shows forest disturbances will more than double across Europe this century as climate change intensifies wildfires, insect infestations, and storms. The finding has major implications for timber supplies, carbon credits, and ecosystem services that businesses and governments rely on—forcing urgent rethinking of forest management strategies.
Originaltitel: Climate change will increase forest disturbances in Europe throughout the 21st century
Wildfires, insect outbreaks, and storms cause large pulses of tree mortality. Climate change amplifies these forest disturbances, yet their future magnitude and extent remain uncertain. Here, we simulated future forest disturbance regimes at 100-meter resolution across Europe using a deep learning-based simulation framework. Our results show that forest disturbances will continue to increase throughout the 21st century, with disturbed areas more than doubling relative to the recent past under an unabated continuation of climate change. Wildfires are the main agent driving future disturbance change. Changing disturbances result in an increase in young forests, substantially altering Europe's forest demography. Because of their profound implications for forest carbon storage and the habitat value of forest ecosystems, disturbances should be a priority of forest policy and management.