TUM School of Life Sciences, Technical University of Munich, Freising, Germany.
Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research, Member of the Leibniz Association, Potsdam, Germany.
Glob Chang Biol. 2024 Aug;30(8):e17431. doi: 10.1111/gcb.17431.
Forests provide important ecosystem services (ESs), including climate change mitigation, local climate regulation, habitat for biodiversity, wood and non-wood products, energy, and recreation. Simultaneously, forests are increasingly affected by climate change and need to be adapted to future environmental conditions. Current legislation, including the European Union (EU) Biodiversity Strategy, EU Forest Strategy, and national laws, aims to protect forest landscapes, enhance ESs, adapt forests to climate change, and leverage forest products for climate change mitigation and the bioeconomy. However, reconciling all these competing demands poses a tremendous task for policymakers, forest managers, conservation agencies, and other stakeholders, especially given the uncertainty associated with future climate impacts. Here, we used process-based ecosystem modeling and robust multi-criteria optimization to develop forest management portfolios that provide multiple ESs across a wide range of climate scenarios. We included constraints to strictly protect 10% of Europe's land area and to provide stable harvest levels under every climate scenario. The optimization showed only limited options to improve ES provision within these constraints. Consequently, management portfolios suffered from low diversity, which contradicts the goal of multi-functionality and exposes regions to significant risk due to a lack of risk diversification. Additionally, certain regions, especially those in the north, would need to prioritize timber provision to compensate for reduced harvests elsewhere. This conflicts with EU LULUCF targets for increased forest carbon sinks in all member states and prevents an equal distribution of strictly protected areas, introducing a bias as to which forest ecosystems are more protected than others. Thus, coordinated strategies at the European level are imperative to address these challenges effectively. We suggest that the implementation of the EU Biodiversity Strategy, EU Forest Strategy, and targets for forest carbon sinks require complementary measures to alleviate the conflicting demands on forests.
森林提供了重要的生态系统服务（ES），包括减缓气候变化、局部气候调节、生物多样性栖息地、木材和非木材产品、能源和娱乐。同时，森林正日益受到气候变化的影响，需要适应未来的环境条件。目前的立法，包括欧盟（EU）生物多样性战略、欧盟森林战略以及国家法律，旨在保护森林景观、增强生态系统服务、使森林适应气候变化，并利用森林产品来减缓气候变化和发展生物经济。然而，协调所有这些相互竞争的需求对政策制定者、森林管理者、保护机构和其他利益相关者来说是一项艰巨的任务，特别是考虑到未来气候影响的不确定性。在这里，我们使用基于过程的生态系统建模和稳健的多准则优化来开发森林管理组合，以在广泛的气候情景下提供多种生态系统服务。我们包括了严格保护欧洲 10%土地面积和在每个气候情景下提供稳定收获水平的约束条件。优化结果显示，在这些约束条件下，只有有限的选择可以改善生态系统服务的提供。因此，管理组合的多样性较低，这与多功能性的目标相矛盾，并使各个地区面临由于缺乏风险多样化而导致的重大风险。此外，某些地区，特别是北部地区，将需要优先提供木材，以弥补其他地区减少的收获量。这与欧盟所有成员国增加森林碳汇的 LULUCF 目标相冲突，并阻止了严格保护区的平等分配，导致某些森林生态系统比其他生态系统受到更多的保护。因此，在欧洲层面协调战略对于有效应对这些挑战至关重要。我们建议，实施欧盟生物多样性战略、欧盟森林战略和森林碳汇目标需要采取互补措施，以缓解对森林的相互竞争的需求。
