by Riccardo Testolin

While forests are one of the main focuses of planned mitigation strategies in the European Union, their evolution under future climate change coupled with silvicultural management is largely unknown. During the STSM, Riccardo worked together with the other scientists at Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK) to assess the impacts of management and climate change on several European forest sites using data provided by the Inter-Sectoral Impact Model Intercomparison Project (ISIMIP).

The aim of this STSM was to start familiarizing with the ISIMIP dataset and prepare a consolidated version to streamline further analyses. The dataset consists of tens of thousands of process-models’ outputs for nine European forests sites belonging to the PROFOUND database. During his stay at PIK, Riccardo performed an extensive data quality check and calculated key variables related to forest production efficiency. The variables will be then analysed with respect to their temporal trends and their relationship with global and local warming.

The STSM represented the start of a collaborative project among ISIMIP members aimed at integrating several process-models to project future climate and management impacts on European forests. This collaboration will continue with the support of the Forest and Ecosystems Resilience working group at PIK and the Forest Modelling Laboratory at the National Research Council of Italy.

If you are interested in doing an STSM, please find more information here.