MOTIVE booklet provides insight into climate change challenges in European forests

The newly published book “Adapting to climate change in European forests – results of the MOTIVE project” summarizes results of a large European research project for a general audience. Carles Gràcia, from CREAF has explained the results of case study of Prades.

Climate change is posing a major challenge to forestry across Europe. Recent research indicates that climate change will most likely exceed a 2 °C rise in mean global temperature by 2100 and without drastic policy change mean temperature may rise between 3 and 6 °C in Europe. These changing environmental conditions affect tree growth and productivity of forests. Moreover, natural disturbance regimes are changing with significant implications on forest dynamics. Past experiences regarding the local and site-specific suitability of species are no longer valid and this calls for an adaptation of present forest management strategies.

Preparing for and adapting to the impacts of climate change in European forests is a major challenge as complex scientific knowledge needs to be communicated not only to the scientific community but importantly also to practitioners and decision makers at the local to regional level.

A considerable part of the work of MOTIVE focused on regional case studies, which were implemented in a participatory process with local stakeholders. The book presents these case studies together with a series of articles that address important aspects of climate change impacts and adaptive forest management. Topics include information on climate change projections for Europe with emphasis on implications for forest management; decision support tools for adaptive forest management etc. The book also describes the types of decision making approaches and their implications for adapting forest management to climate change. It gives insight into the challenges which climate change presents, and informs readers as to the various potential responses around Europe.

The project MOdels for AdapTIVE forest Management (MOTIVE) was a large-scale integrated project in the 7th Framework Programme of the EU. MOTIVE involved 20 partners from 14 European countries with a budget of 9 million euros.

“Adapting to climate change in European forests – results of the MOTIVE project” has been edited by Joanne Fitzgerald and Marcus Lindner of EFI with contributions from various project participants like Carles Gràcia from CREAF. The book can be downloaded from the link below.

See Attached files here:

PDF 32.87MB “Adapting to climate change in European forests – results of the MOTIVE project” (pdf)