European Forest Conservation has Created More Robust Forests to Changes in Climate on the Continental and Regional Scale.

Europe has been placing forests under conservation since 1909, but more recently, with the establishment of Natura 2000 in 1992, the continent has seen even more land being taken out of active forest management and into conservation. Little research has been done on how this large-scale, multi-national forest conservation policy has affected European ecosystems to date. It is assumed that forest conservation can help play a role in mitigating climate change, but that is only true if forest under conservation will retain their level of net primary production (NPP) under climate anomalies (e.g., increased temperature, higher/lower precipitation) - which are projected to increase in the future. To test whether managed or unmanaged forests are better suited to withstand future climate change, we use remotely sensed data along with computer algorithms to isolate the management effect on forest productivity thereby removing drivers of forest productivity that management cannot control (e.g. elevation and latitude). We then examine the productivity and robustness of forests that are under conservation to those under typical forest management, using empirical data in the context of climate anomalies. We found that the sensitivity of forests to climate anomalies given the differences between managed and unmanaged forests varied by bio-region. The strongest effect was seen in central Europe. Here, unmanaged forests have been more robust to climate anomalies than their managed counterparts when analyzing relative NPP values. These unmanaged forests experienced the lowest relative decrease in productivity during drought, and experienced smaller variation in productivity in response to changing temperatures. Productivity levels in unmanaged forests in other regions also experienced little relative change overall given climate anomalies. Though there is a relatively short history of conservation management in Europe, with the average forest only having been conserved for 32 years, significant impacts on forest structure and their resulting ability to withstand climate change can already be seen.