Climate variability in forest management planning: The LIFE AForClimate project.

Previous research experiences have shown that climate variability can play a relevant role in forest planning and management within a climate change scenario. In forest planning and management, yield tables, site quality indices, age classes, and rates of growth are some of the most frequently used parameters and tools. However, these ‘traditional’ methods do not include the influence of climate variability on forest growth over time, although it is one of the main influencing factors in tree growth. Changes in climate determine changes in thermo-pluviometric regimes that often have a marked influence on forest growth trends. Forest biomass, resilience, and carbon sequestration may be damaged unless forest planning and management implement the relationships between climate variability and trends of tree growth. The absence of an approach that implements the relationships between climate variability and tree growth as an ordinary tool for forest planning and management can have significant negative effects on forest biomass, resilience and carbon sequestration. The project AForClimate (Adaption of FORest management to CLIMATE variability: an ecological approach - LIFE15 CCA/IT/000089) aims to adapt forest management to climate change by defining an effective method for estimating the impacts of climate variability on growth of the forest. In this, AForClimate aims to manage forests in order to preserve their resilience, promote their natural renewal and distribute the wood mass harvested over periods with climatic conditions favourable to growth. The project targets beech ecosystems given their economic and ecological importance at European level. In Europe there are about 15 million hectares of beech forests that grow mainly in mountain areas of central and southern Europe, from sea level up to 1,800 m altitude. The expected results of the project are: (i) adapt forest management to climate change in the project areas; (ii) develop a detailed forecasting model for forest management that takes into account climate variability over time; (iii) build a monitoring scheme to assess, at the end of the project, the impacts of the management approach in terms of forest growth and regeneration; (iv) elaborate a prototype of Decision Support System to plan forest management in a climate change scenario. The project feasibility will be demonstrated in three Italian regions (Molise, Sicily, and Tuscany) thanks to the support of three territorial partners responsible for management in their respective areas of competence: Molise Region, Sicily Region, and Mountain Union of the Mugello Municipalities