European forests are facing unprecedented challenges. While they provide critically important ecosystem services such as carbon storage, clean air, local cooling, or maintaining biodiversity, their resilience is increasingly put under pressure by intensifying disturbances. Their carbon sink strength and storage capacity are apparently weakening in Europe, and their management, when optimized to mitigate climate change, might conflict with biodiversity protection, or vice versa. Thus, identifying pathways for sustainable forestry is a multi-disciplinary and multi-actor task, and is central for the European Green Deal Biodiversity and Ecosystem Health strategy and also at the heart of the EU Horizon 2020 CLIMB-FOREST (2022-2027) project ( https://www.climbforest.eu/ ).
In this session, we will explore how to design and implement climate- and biodiversity-smart forestry, aiming for long-term sustainability and multifunctionality. We are interested in contributions that address forest ecosystem services in an integrated manner, including:
- management history
- biomass production, carbon gains and losses
- impacts of major disturbances and extreme events
- biogeochemical and biophysical properties of forest stands
- past climate change and future climate projections for forests
- interactions with atmospheric chemistry, e.g. aerosols and BVOC production
- bioeconomic aspects and wood production
- scenarios for alternative future forest management
Taking a broad approach, we particularly welcome interdisciplinary approaches and insights from forest ecology, climate science, atmospheric chemistry, biogeochemistry, biophysics, socio-economic modeling, policy analyses, and beyond. Join us to share your research and engage in dialogue on how to reconcile climate mitigation, biodiversity, and resilience in forests.