Climate change threatens the productivity stability of Italian forests
Abstract
Mediterranean forests are emerging as one of the clearest hotspots of climate-change impacts, where rapid warming and increasingly severe droughts and heatwaves are pushing forest ecosystems toward their physiological and functional limits. These pressures threaten productivity, carbon dynamics, ecosystem stability, and the services forests provide. In this context, a process-based forest ecosystem model was used to assess climate-driven changes in carbon dynamics and productivity stability across Italian forests within the Inter-Sectoral Impact Model Intercomparison Project (ISIMIP) framework. 5135 plots were simulated, corresponding to ~80% of the field plots included in the second Italian National Forest Inventory (INFI). Model simulations were first evaluated against independent observations of gross primary production (GPP) from satellite-based products and forest carbon variables from the third INFI. Forest dynamics from 2015 to 2100 were simulated under three CMIP6-based emission scenarios (SSP1-2.6, SSP3-7.0, and SSP5-8.5) using two climate forcings (GFDL-ESM4 and UKESM1-0-LL). Future responses were assessed for GPP, aboveground biomass, growing stock volume, and carbon stocks, while variability in GPP was quantified using the coefficient of variation as an indicator of forest stability. Results show that the model reproduced the main spatial and temporal patterns of forest productivity and carbon stocks. Future projections revealed strong spatial heterogeneity and…
Read the paper
Related studies
- Climate Change Impacts on Marine Ecosystems
- Assisted Gene Flow to Facilitate Local Adaptation to Climate Change
- Climate Change Effects on Plant Disease: Genomes to Ecosystems
- Biodiversity and Climate Change: Integrating Evolutionary and Ecological Responses of Species and Communities
- A systematic review of climate change education: giving children and young people a ‘voice’ and a ‘hand’ in redressing climate change
- Global Monsoon Dynamics and Climate Change
Go deeper in Evidence Hub
Evidence Hub adds a study data sheet (design, sample size, evidence level, key numbers), an AI summary and a chat grounded in the paper's text.