The impact of changing forest composition in Europe - longest carbon turnover time in unmanaged and broadleaved deciduous forests

Abstract

Forests play a crucial role in Europe’s strategy for achieving carbon neutrality. Carbon turnover time - the time that carbon spends in the ecosystem - is a fundamental component in determining forest potential to mitigate climate change. However, there is a significant knowledge gap regarding how current and future forest management practices will affect carbon turnover time. This study aims to compare the effects of various forest management strategies on carbon turnover time in European forests. To achieve this, we used the dynamic global vegetation model LPJ-GUESS to simulate carbon pools and fluxes under stylised forest management scenarios mainly based on changing species composition. We calculated carbon turnover times under two conditions: first, with constant climate and CO 2 concentration to assess the isolated impact of forest management; second, under a climate change scenario (SSP3-RCP7.0) to evaluate the combined effects of forest management and climate change. Our results indicate that unmanaged forests and the transition to broadleaved deciduous forests have a similar ecosystem carbon turnover time, which is the longest among all the management options across all the European climatic zones. Climate change decreases ecosystem carbon turnover time in any forest management, in a similar way, especially in cold climates. This study is the first step to include forest management when modelling carbon turnover time and indicates how the shift towards broadleaved forests, which is seen as an important climate-change adaptation strategy in many European regions, can also provide co-benefits for climate-change mitigation.