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MOTIVE: New model illustrates impacts of climate change

02.05.2012

A number of results documenting the impacts of climate change on Europe’s forests have been produced within the MOdels for AdapTIVE forest management (MOTIVE) project. “Amongst the project results, a consistent set of high-resolution climate scenarios has been developed”, tells Dr. Marc Hanewinkel, the scientific leader of MOTIVE. A hybrid species distribution model including realistic tree migration has been developed and applied to the climate change scenario ensemble. Several process-based and empirical models in various case-study areas of Europe have been significantly improved to run adaptive management strategies and investigate their effects on different goods and services.

The improved species distribution model illustrates that only early successional tree species, for example birch, may reach migration rates which are sufficiently large to track recent rapid climate change. However, late successional species, for example European beech or oaks, reveal very low migration rates which are insufficient to track ongoing and accelerated climate change. For these tree species, major biome shifts under rapidly changing climatic conditions will only be possible with human intervention such as assisted migration.

The scientific results on climate scenarios together with other MOTIVE results will be presented in an open science conference ‘Tackling climate change: the contribution of forest scientific knowledge’ from 21-24 May 2012 in Tours, France. Other contributions will be delivered by European intergovernmental COST Action ECHOES, the European research projects BACCARA and REINFFORCE, the international research projects TRANZFOR and ForEAdapt, and a new IUFRO working group on adaptation to climate change. More information on the conference and online registration is available here.

The MOdels for AdapTIVE forest management (MOTIVE) project met last week for its yearly general meeting in Birmensdorf, Switzerland. The project, which began in 2009 is now in it’s fourth year.

Further information:

Dr. Marc Hanewinkel, marc.hanewinkel wsl.ch
Dr. Marcus Lindner, marcus.lindner efi.int
Project website.