LIFE RedBosques_Clima

The climate change scenarios foresee in the Mediterranean Region an increase in temperature above the global average, more pronounced in the summer months as well as a reduction in precipitation in winter and especially in summer. As a consequence, there is an increasingly evident effect on the forests of the Iberian Peninsula at all levels of organization, affecting the structure of the forests and their functioning. To improve adaptation capacity, it is necessary to increase the resilience of forest ecosystems, acting at two scales: stand and landscape level. However, forest planning, when it exists, does not usually include objectives for adaptation to climate change, generally due to lack of training of forest managers on these issues or due to ignorance of the vulnerability of forest to the threats of climate change, because there are no tools to evaluate it.

Project actions

Three groups of actions are proposed :

1. Actions to promote good adaptation practices in forest management based on “natural solutions” through tools to facilitate their implementation. Facilitate putting into practice the existing scientific knowledge: determine which characteristics of forests in a favourable state of conservation confer adaptive capacity, and use them as references in a tool to assess the vulnerability of forests; develop a protocol to ensure the quality and effectiveness of adaptation measures, applicable to all forests in the EU.
2. Actions to implement pilot actions that allow the improvement in the adaptation capacity of various types of forest. Implementation of tools (vulnerability assessment and standard for adaptation measures) in several pilot cases of adaptation to climate change, selected in three representative situations - and therefore easily replicable - of the most frequent conservation status in Spanish forests, with the participation of responsible administrations, owners and other local agents.
3. Actions to encourage the transferability of project results and promote their replication throughout the territory. Promote the replication by the main agents involved in forest management of the proposed management model, so that adaptation measures can be extended to the entire territory. It will act at three levels: Administration managers, owners and policy makers.