TY - JOUR
T1 - Regional impacts of climatic change on forests in the state of Brandenburg, Germany
AU - Lindner, Marcus
AU - Bugmann, Harald
AU - Lasch, Petra
AU - Flechsig, Michael
AU - Cramer, Wolfgang
N1 - Funding Information:
This research was supported by the Ministry of the Environment of the State of Brandenburg. We thank the Federal Institute for Geosciences and Natural Resources and the Environmental Agency of Brandenburg for kindly providing us with new digital soils data and the map of potential natural vegetation, respectively. We appreciate the comments of an anonymous reviewer on an earlier draft of this paper.
PY - 1997/3
Y1 - 1997/3
N2 - The changes of climate projected for the next century will most likely alter both the environment and the growth of forests. In a regional case study, the two forest gap models FORSKA and FORCLIM were applied to simulate vegetation composition using spatially differentiated site data on a 10 x 10-km grid across the state of Brandenburg, Northeast Germany. Three climate scenarios were used to investigate the possible consequences of a changing climate on the environmental constraints of forest growth in the state. To test the plausibility of the forest composition simulated by the two models, their results were compared with a map of potential natural vegetation as well as with each other. The simulation results show that both models respond realistically to the spatial variability of the environment and thus are suitable for regional applications. However, there are a number of quantitative differences between the simulation results of the models, FORSKA's strength is in simulating the ecological effects of the spatial variability of soil water holding capacity and nitrogen availability, whereas FORCLIM realistically portrays the climate-induced distribution limits of trees, e.g. beech (Fagus sylvatica L.). The study suggests that climatic change could have considerable consequences for future competitive relationships between species. According to the two models, the main driving force of vegetation change would be the increased occurrence of drought, which already today determines some distribution limits of tree species in Brandenburg. Under the strongest change of climate investigated in the present study, none of the species currently present on the landscape could grow any more in certain areas of Brandenburg. Conclusions are drown concerning the importance of regional model applications for testing model performance under a wide variety of environmental conditions as well as for forest planning. Regional analyses of the impacts of climate change on forests may help to develop forest management strategies to cope with the risk of changing environmental conditions.
AB - The changes of climate projected for the next century will most likely alter both the environment and the growth of forests. In a regional case study, the two forest gap models FORSKA and FORCLIM were applied to simulate vegetation composition using spatially differentiated site data on a 10 x 10-km grid across the state of Brandenburg, Northeast Germany. Three climate scenarios were used to investigate the possible consequences of a changing climate on the environmental constraints of forest growth in the state. To test the plausibility of the forest composition simulated by the two models, their results were compared with a map of potential natural vegetation as well as with each other. The simulation results show that both models respond realistically to the spatial variability of the environment and thus are suitable for regional applications. However, there are a number of quantitative differences between the simulation results of the models, FORSKA's strength is in simulating the ecological effects of the spatial variability of soil water holding capacity and nitrogen availability, whereas FORCLIM realistically portrays the climate-induced distribution limits of trees, e.g. beech (Fagus sylvatica L.). The study suggests that climatic change could have considerable consequences for future competitive relationships between species. According to the two models, the main driving force of vegetation change would be the increased occurrence of drought, which already today determines some distribution limits of tree species in Brandenburg. Under the strongest change of climate investigated in the present study, none of the species currently present on the landscape could grow any more in certain areas of Brandenburg. Conclusions are drown concerning the importance of regional model applications for testing model performance under a wide variety of environmental conditions as well as for forest planning. Regional analyses of the impacts of climate change on forests may help to develop forest management strategies to cope with the risk of changing environmental conditions.
KW - Climate change
KW - Forest gap model
KW - Potential natural vegetation
KW - Regional analysis
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=0030614197&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1016/S0168-1923(96)02381-7
DO - 10.1016/S0168-1923(96)02381-7
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:0030614197
SN - 0168-1923
VL - 84
SP - 123
EP - 135
JO - Agricultural and Forest Meteorology
JF - Agricultural and Forest Meteorology
IS - 1-2
ER -
