ABOUT

The work benefits from a grant from Norway and Technology Agency of the Czech Republic within the KAPPA Programme (TO01000345).

The originality of the project lies in a unique retrospective and projection analysis of forest functions in Central Europe (Czech Republic case) and Scandinavia (Central Norway case). Central European forests have been significantly affected by drought stress since at least the beginning of this century. As a consequence, their declining vitality leads to secondary biotic threats such as large-scale outbreaks of bark beetles. In contrast, Scandinavian forests have not yet been severely affected by climate change leading to large-scale disturbances, but drought events leading to forest decline have also occurred in Norway in recent years. To address shifts in forest functions, we will use an original methodological approach that has not been used before in either country. Our approach will combine field data from different research/inventory plots covering a wide range of forest conditions with remote sensing observations at different spatial and temporal scales (satellite and airborne).

This will provide evidence at a national scale of changes in forest ecosystem functions over the last two decades and help to develop models for projecting forest functions according to climate scenarios. Linking the evolution of managed forests, characterised by stages of tree species mixtures and stand structures, with their resistance and resilience and with their ability to fulfil production and regulating functions (derived from a variety of measurements and retrospective analyses) under past, present and future climate conditions; all this up-scaled to the landscape level (using remote sensing) can be effectively used as a significant contribution to both forest management decision-making processes and draft legislation. The project work is effectively distributed among the project partners according to their expertise and is divided into 7 work packages over 40 months.