Decision Support in AFORCLIMATE

The general objective of the LIFE AFORCLIMATE project is to maintain and improve the efficiency of the beech forest ecosystem in the Apennines, through effective forest management that is adapted to climate change. To achieve this objective, the project will define a method for measuring likely impacts of climatic factors so as to manage beech forests in ways that promote forest regeneration and seed production and ensure resilience. The project aims to achieve biomass increases (and therefore CO2 sequestration) of 5-7% to 15-20% compared to the reference value deriving from the application of the traditional approach. This will also increase overall ecosystem functionality. The project expects to achieve the following results:

• To make forest management in the project areas actions consistent with adaptation to climate change;
• To create a detailed forecast model for forestry management that takes climate change variability into account;
• To develop a monitoring scheme to assess, by the end of the project, the impacts of the approach to forest management in terms of regeneration capacity, production capacity and biodiversity. This scheme will take into consideration the entire ecosystem of beech forest and all components essential for appropriate forest management; and
• To develop an extensive information campaign complying with the second objective of the EU Strategy on adaptation to climate change: “promoting better informed decision-making by addressing gaps in knowledge about adaptation and further developing the European Climate Adaptation Platform (Climate-ADAPT) as the ‘one-stop shop’ for adaptation information in Europe”.

more information can be found about the AforClimate project here
- http://www.aforclimate.eu/ (at the moment in Italian);
- http://ec.europa.eu/environment/life/project/Projects/index.cfm?fuseaction=search.dspPage&n_proj_id=5668 (a short description in English).