3FOR project

The goal of our 3FOR project, funded by the Velux Stiftung, is to develop climate-smart forestry strategies for European regions, amidst the uncertainties of future climate change.

Forests have received increased attention in recent years as a natural climate solution, because of their role in the carbon cycle and their potential to offset carbon emissions. In addition, forests offer numerous invaluable ecosystem services to society, including timber provision, water cycling, local climate regulation, and cultural amenities. Furthermore, forests play a crucial role in preserving biodiversity. In Europe, the multi-faceted roles of forests have been acknowledged in recent legislative strategies, e.g., the New EU Forest Strategy for 2030, the EU Biodiversity Strategy for 2030, and the EU regulation on land use, land use change, and forestry.

However, the health of European forests is deteriorating and increasing climate change and corresponding extreme events pose further major threats. This makes adaptation of forests and their management strategies necessary, requiring a transition from the currently often static approaches to dynamic ones that consider diverse climate projections. In our project, we will utilize process-based models like LPJ-GUESS to project future forest dynamics and assess ecosystem services provision across emission scenarios.

We will combine these simulations with robust multi-criteria optimization, to develop forest management portfolios that can mitigate ecological and economic risks while maximizing benefits. This approach facilitates the development of climate-resilient forest management regimes applicable across regions, functions, and environments. In collaboration with stakeholders, we aim to further refine strategies by regionally prioritizing ecosystem services.

The project consists of the following steps:

1. Implement more detailed forest management options into LPJ-GUESS, including new species parametrizations
2. Improve the representation of disturbances
3. Perform scenario runs for selected focus regions, assessing the impact of future climates on forest management options
4. Compute the optimized management portfolios
5. Assess the applicability in actual forest management sites and reforestation projects
6. Develop a toolkit to communicate the results to various stakeholder groups

Watch the video: The 3FOR-Project: Taking an integrated approach to forests