Future trade-offs and synergies among ecosystem services in Mediterranean forests under global change scenarios
Introduction
For centuries, forests in the Mediterranean basin have contributed to human well-being and to national economies by providing multiple ecosystem services (FAO and Plan Bleu, 2018, Gauquelin et al., 2018). These include goods such as timber, mushrooms or cork, but also regulating services such as prevention of soil erosion or water purification (Croitoru and Liagre, 2013, Merlo and Croitoru, 2005). As a consequence, Mediterranean forests have evolved over centuries in close interaction with human activities (Blondel et al., 2010).
In the last decades, the low economic profit of most forest products – particularly timber – has led to a progressive abandonment of forestry activities in the Northern shore of the Mediterranean basin (Valls et al., 2012). As a result, many forests currently have dense structures, with increased competition for resources, growth stagnation and a generalized tree weakening, eventually increasing fire risk and the vulnerability of forests to abiotic and biotic disturbances (e.g. droughts and pests; FAO and Plan Bleu, 2018). Moreover, the Mediterranean basin is one of the world’s primary climate change hotspots (Diffenbaugh and Giorgi, 2012). Climate change predictions for the Mediterranean basin foresee a generalized increase in average mean temperatures and changes in precipitation patterns, along with an increase in frequency and intensity of extreme events (Cramer et al., 2018, Stocker et al., 2013). Increasingly warm and dry conditions can cause climate-driven forest growth decline and die-off episodes, especially when they affect forest which are already vulnerable due to their structure (Carnicer et al., 2011, Gentilesca et al., 2017, Klein et al., 2019). The resulting reduction in forest productivity and increase in tree mortality can ultimately lead to profound changes in ecosystem processes and functions, eventually affecting the provision of their associated ecosystem services (Felipe-Lucia et al., 2018, Fu et al., 2013).
Adaptation of forests to climate change can be assisted through forest management (Vilà-Cabrera et al., 2018). Management objectives are not only determined by the ecological and socio-economic context at the local level (e.g. sub-national forest and environmental policies), but also by the decisions and policies implemented at regional and continental scales. These multiple objectives and influential factors – as well as their interactions – should be considered when predicting the future composition and structure of Mediterranean forests and the potential services they will provide (Morán-Ordóñez et al., 2019). However, to date, only a few studies have explicitly evaluated the long-term consequences of applying alternative forest management strategies on ecosystem service provision by forests and under different climate change projections (e.g. Albrich et al., 2018, Mina et al., 2017, Schwaiger et al., 2019), and none of them focused on Mediterranean forests.
Scenario analysis is an excellent tool to understand the uncertainty around the future condition of a system (e.g. Mediterranean forests) by evaluating plausible changes in the relationships and feedbacks between its direct and indirect drivers of change (IPBES, 2016). An scenario is a coherent, internally consistent and plausible description of a possible future state of the world or the system model (Nakicenovic et al., 2000). The development of scenarios entails an exercise of creative thinking and integration of multiple objectives and values represented through the plural views of the different stakeholders. For example, the latest European Forest Sector Outlook (EFSO) used a scenario building approach to deal with the complex and imperfectly understood challenges in policy-making within the forestry sector at the EU-level (UNECE, 2011). However, evaluating the implications of these scenarios at the local scale requires incorporating local specificities in the scenario narratives, as well as using models that adequately represent the functioning of the system model.
In this study, we evaluated future ecosystem service provision of Mediterranean pine forests using an integrated modelling framework that includes the multiple factors that can affect their functioning at different scales. Our main objective was to assess the trade-offs and synergies in the provision of ecosystem services under a set of feasible future scenarios, using as case study the forests of central Catalonia (NE Spain). Most studies that assess the future provision of ecosystem services restrict their analyses to a single ecosystem service or a single driver (mostly climate), providing a biased and simplified view of ecosystem responses to global change (IPBES, 2018, Morán-Ordóñez et al., 2019, Runting et al., 2017). In our case, scenarios resulted from the combination of future socio-economic (EU forestry policies) and climate change assumptions. With the assistance of local stakeholders, scenarios were then translated into specific forest management plans used to simulate future forest dynamics and project changes in ecosystem service provision.
Specifically, we sought to respond to the following questions: (1) how will the ecosystem service provision of Mediterranean pine forests vary under different EU forest policies and climatic scenarios? (2) do trade-offs and synergies between ecosystem services differ between scenarios? and (3) what driver/s are more important to understand changes in ecosystem service provision (climate, forest management)? By evaluating the dynamic response of multiple services to various sources of future uncertainty, this study aims to shed light on the future consequences of current management decisions, informing decision-making and forest management at both the planning and operational levels.
Section snippets
Study area and forest characteristics
The study was conducted in the Solsonès county, central Catalonia region (NE Spain). Solsonès is located in the pre-Pyrenees, in the transition zone between the plains of the Ebro valley and the Pyrenees (Fig. 1). Altitude ranges between 400 and 2400 m a.s.l., with a clear south-north elevation gradient. Climate is dry-sub-humid to sub-humid Mediterranean, with a mean temperature of 12 °C and 650 mm of rainfall (Supplementary Material S1). The county, which covers 1000 km2, is sparsely
Forest dynamics
Predictions of forest composition and structure of simulated plots differed markedly depending on the climatic scenario and, particularly, on the policy management scenario (i.e. the silvicultural plan applied under a given policy context). For both RCP scenarios, the low intensity of harvests under the business-as-usual management led to denser forests, with larger number of trees of relatively small size (Fig. 3). Final basal area of forest plots under the business-as-usual management were
Discussion
Our study used an integrative modelling framework that considered the impacts of multiple interacting drivers on a broad set of ecosystem services. We observed that the future provision of ecosystem services by Mediterranean forests will be strongly determined by forest management, and identified potential synergies and trade-offs between different pairs of services. As such, our approach represents a valuable tool to support well-informed, evidence-based decision making in managing
Declaration of Competing Interest
The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper.
Acknowledgements
This work was supported by the Spanish Government through the INMODES project (grant number: CGL2017-89999-C2-2-R), the ERA-NET FORESTERRA project INFORMED (grant number: 29183), the ERANET-SUMFORESTS project FutureBioEcon (PCIN-2017-052), and the Generalitat de Catalunya (CERCA Program). AMO, AA and MC were supported by Spanish Government through Juan de la Cierva and Ramón y Cajal fellowship programs (IJCI-2016-30349, IJCI-2016-30049 and RYC-2012-11109 respectively). SdM benefited from a
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Both authors contributed equally.