by Michael Smith (Veshengro), RFA
Only healthy and productive forests have a chance to act against the changes in climate. Such are the findings of the recent congress “Forest Ecosystems in a Changing Environment” that has been held in Istanbul, Turkey.
The forests of Europe currently compensate for around 10% of the European CO2 emissions and are thereby reducing the greenhouse effect. On the other hand the changes in climate also affect the forests, either directly through the rising temperatures and extreme events such as droughts or gales, or indirect through changes in the occurrences of diseases and insects.
The already observable extreme events, such as the more frequent and more ferocious gales and especially the climate scenarios that are being predicted are a great challenge to a proper forest management, which will have to rely also in future on the results of monitoring and scientific studies.
Our forests are still being destabilized through an intake of nitrogen that is way too high. At more than two thirds of the 186 permanent observation areas critical rates were being exceeded constantly. Such observations are recorded all over central Europe.
In the short term, however, this high amount of nitrogen also appears to have some benefits. Recent data has shown that high uptake of nitrogen appear to lead to an increased growth amongst forest trees, which results in a higher uptake of carbon out of the atmosphere.
There is, however, great uncertainty as to the scale of this additional uptake of carbon. The experts fear that the environmental condition will probably deteriorate in future even faster than before. Therefore forestry related environmental observation must be continued and further developed. The continued financing of the currently existing forestry monitoring network on EU level and in individual countries must urgently be secured.
Healthy and productive forests reduce impact of climate change
