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Data and scripts to generate results and figures for the material in Mauri et al. 2023 - Assisted tree migration can reduce but not avert the decline of forest ecosystem services in Europe, Global Environmental Change Journal

The JRC PESETA IV study shows that ecosystems, people and economies in the EU will face major impacts from climate change if we do not urgently mitigate greenhouse gas emissions or adapt to climate change. The burden of climate change shows a clear north-south divide, with southern regions in Europe much more impacted, through the effects of extreme heat, water scarcity, drought, forest fires and agriculture losses. Limiting global warming to well below 2°C would considerably reduce climate change impacts in Europe. Adaptation to climate change would further minimize unavoidable impacts in a cost-effective manner, with considerable co-benefits from nature-based solutions., JRC.C.6-Economics of Climate Change, Energy and Transport

This report describes the maps on tree species distribution routinely produced at Joint Research Centre, and the data sets used to produce them. Its aim is to help those searching for information on forest tree species distribution in Europe and to identify which of the maps might fit their needs, what their strengths and weaknesses are, and what data and methods were used to produce them. The report provides information on the different data sets reporting tree species occurrences in Europe on which the maps are based, highlighting the uncertainties and limitations affecting their use. The report then presents different types of tree species distribution maps based on these observational data sets. For each map type, it provides information for a correct use, including which questions a particularly map type is able to help answer and a suggested caption that can be used when reproducing a map. Finally, for two tree species, the report provides multiple distribution maps side-by-side, with annotations to help interpret the information, including uncertainty that they convey. These examples illustrate how different map types convey different types of information and how they are affected by data availability, which differs not only between source data sets but also between species within the same data set., JRC.D.1-Bio-economy

Despite the importance of high mountains, little is known concerning the potential impacts of climate change in high altitude ecosystems. Therefore, the aim of this study is to assess changes 1) in the spatial range of the alpine tundra domain (ATD), and 2) in elevational shifts of the treeline ecotone in Europe under scenarios of climate change. We used 11 regional climate model (RCM) simulations from EURO CORDEX [https://www.euro-cordex.net], disaggregated at the 1 km grid size, representing two RCP scenarios, i.e. RCP4.5 and RCP8.5, in three warming periods i.e. 1.5 °C, 2 °C and 3 °C and the 2050s (2036-2065). Findings of this study indicate a pronounced contraction of the ATD across regions, scenarios and periods. First, in the Alps, with a 1.5 °C warming it is projected that the ATD will lose an extent of around 31-36% with respect to the reference period (1981-2010). Comparable results were obtained using both scenarios, RCP4.5 and RCP8.5. In the 3 °C warming period the extent of the ATD in the Alps is projected to be only 19% of the present extent. Second, in the Scandes, a contraction of the ATD of around 50% in the 1.5 °C warming period is projected in both scenarios. Then, in the 3 °C warming period most of the ATD is projected to disappear, with only 8% of ATD projected to persist. Lastly, in the Pyrenees the projections are worse than in the Alps and Scandes. The contraction of ATD is already projected above 74% in the 1.5 °C warming period in both scenarios. Then, in the 2 °C warming period only a marginal 4% of ATD is projected to persist, and virtually disappears in the 3 °C warming., JRC.D.1-Bio-economy

This report presents an ecosystem assessment covering the total land area of the EU as well as the EU marine regions. The assessment is carried out by Joint Research Centre, European Environment Agency, DG Environment, and the European Topic Centres on Biological Diversity and on Urban, Land and Soil Systems. This report constitutes a knowledge base which can support the evaluation of the 2020 biodiversity targets. It also provides a data foundation for future assessments and policy developments, in particular with respect to the ecosystem restoration agenda for the next decade (2020-2030). The report presents an analysis of the pressures and condition of terrestrial, freshwater and marine ecosystems using a single, comparable methodology based on European data on trends of pressures and condition relative to the policy baseline 2010. The following main conclusions are drawn: - Pressures on ecosystems exhibit different trends. - Land take, atmospheric emissions of air pollutants and critical loads of nitrogen are decreasing but the absolute values of all these pressures remain too high. - Impacts from climate change on ecosystems are increasing. - Invasive alien species of union concern are observed in all ecosystems, but their impact is particularly high in urban ecosystems and grasslands. - Pressures from overfishing activities and marine pollution are still high. - In the long term, air and freshwater quality is improving. - In forests and agroecosystems, which represent over 80% of the EU territory, there are improvements in structural condition indicators (biomass, deadwood, area under organic farming) relative to the baseline year 2010 but some key bio-indicators such as tree-crown defoliation continue to increase. This indicates that ecosystem condition is not improving. - Species-related indicators show no progress or further declines, particularly in agroecosystems. The analysis of trends in ecosystem services concluded that the current potential of ecosystems to deliver timber, protection against floods, crop pollination, and nature-based recreation is equal to or lower than the baseline value for 2010. At the same time, the demand for these services has significantly increased. A lowered potential in combination with a higher demand risks to further decrease the condition of ecosystems and their contribution to human well-being. Despite the wide coverage of environmental legislation in the EU, there are still large gaps in the legal protection of ecosystems. On land, 76% of the area of terrestrial ecosystems, mainly forests, agroecosystems and urban ecosystems, are excluded from a legal designation under the Bird and Habitat Directives. Freshwater and marine ecosystems are subject to specific protection measures under the Water Framework and Marine Strategy Framework Directives. The condition of ecosystems that are under legal designation is unfavourable. More efforts are needed to bend the curve of biodiversity loss and ecosystem degradation and to put ecosystems on a path to recovery. The progress that is made in certain areas such as pollution reduction, increasing air and water quality, increasing share of organic farming, the expansion of forests, and the efforts to maintain marine fish stocks at sustainable levels show that a persistent implementation of policies can be effective. These successes should encourage us to act now and to put forward an ambitious plan for the restoration of Europe’s ecosystems., JRC.D.3-Land Resources

Data assimilation (DA) methods have been used recently to constrain the climate model forecasts by paleo-proxy records. Both DA and climate models are computationally very expensive. Moreover, in paleo-DA, the time step of consequence for observations is usually too long for a dynamical model to follow the previous analysis state and the chaotic behavior of the model becomes dominant. The majority of recent paleoclimate studies using DA have performed low- or intermediate-resolution global simulations along with an off-line DA approach. In an off-line DA, the re-initialization cycle is completely removed after the assimilation step. In this paper, we design a computationally affordable DA to assimilate yearly pseudo-observations and real observations into an ensemble of COSMO-CLM high-resolution regional climate model (RCM) simulations over Europe, for which the ensemble members slightly differ in boundary and initial conditions. Within a perfect model experiment, the performance of the applied DA scheme is evaluated with respect to its sensitivity to the noise levels of pseudo-observations. It was observed that the injected bias in the pseudo-observations linearly impacts the DA skill. Such experiments can serve as a tool for the selection of proxy records, which can potentially reduce the state estimation error when they are assimilated. Additionally, the sensitivity of COSMO-CLM to the boundary conditions is addressed. The geographical regions where the model exhibits high internal variability are identified. Two sets of experiments are conducted by averaging the observations over summer and winter. Furthermore, the effect of the spurious correlations within the observation space is studied and a optimal correlation radius, within which the observations are assumed to be correlated, is detected. Finally, the pollen-based reconstructed quantities at the mid-Holocene are assimilated into the RCM and the performance is evaluated against a test dataset. We conclude that the DA approach is a promising tool for creating high-resolution yearly analysis quantities. The affordable DA method can be applied to efficiently improve climate field reconstruction efforts by combining high-resolution paleoclimate simulations and the available proxy records.

European forests provide a set of fundamental services that contribute to climate change mitigation and human well-being. At the same time, forests are vulnerable systems because the long life-span of trees limits the possibility of rapid adaptation to drastic environmental changes. Climate-driven disturbances in forests, such as fires, windstorms and insect outbreaks, are expected to rise drastically under global warming. As a result, key forest services, such as carbon sequestration and supply of wood materials, could be seriously affected in the near future. Despite the relevance and urgency of the issue, little is known about the vulnerability of European forests to multiple climate-related hazards and the adaptation benefits of alternative forest management strategies. To fill this knowledge gap we investigated the susceptibility of European forests when exposed to a given natural disturbance under different forest management scenarios. For this purpose, we assessed forest vulnerability by integrating in a data-driven framework satellite observations, national forest inventories, land surface climatic data and records of disturbances over the 2000-2017 period. The integration of these data streams is meant to capture the key drivers of vulnerability and to quantify, for the first time, the vulnerability of European forests to fires, windstorms and insect outbreaks in a systematic and spatially explicit manner. We point out that, the term vulnerability is used in this study to express to what degree a forest ecosystem is affected when exposed to a given disturbance. In order to derive risk estimates, vulnerability estimates should be integrated with hazard and exposure components, according to typical impact assessment frameworks. Results of this analyses show that in average at Europe level forest vulnerability to windstorms appears the disturbance with larger biomass loss both in relative and absolute terms (~38%, ~17 t ha-1) compared to fires (~24%, ~12.5 t ha-1) and insect outbreaks (~21%, ~9 t ha-1). Substantial spatial variations in vulnerability emerge and depict generally higher values in norther and Mediterranean regions. Overall, forest structural properties play a larger control on the vulnerability of European forests to natural disturbances compared to climate and landscape features. However, increases in temperature and changes in precipitation patterns occurred over the last two decades, have contributed substantially to make European forests more vulnerable to natural disturbances. We found that these changes in climate led to a limited increase in vulnerability at Europe for fires and windstorms and to a strong increase for insect outbreaks. However, contrasting regional trends emerging over Europe mask relevant temporal changes in vulnerability occurring at local scale. When analyses of single disturbances are combined together, results show that large part of the European forests are substantially vulnerable to at least one natural disturbance and that many of the areas more vulnerable have been subject to an amplification of vulnerability over the observational period due to changes in climate. Reducing tree age and tree density appear effective forest management strategies to reduce the vulnerability of European forests to climate-driven disturbances. The magnitude of the potential benefits appears strongly dependent on local environmental conditions. Previous assessments of future climate risks to European forests, based on catalogues of disturbances collected at country level, have showed that damage from fires, windstorms and insect outbreaks is likely to increase further in coming decades. Such intensification could offset the impact of land-based strategies aiming to increase the forest carbon sink. However, the country scale approach used in such studies do not allow to explore in detail the underlying physical processes and to elaborate adaptation strategies at appropriate local scales. It is therefore fundamental to elaborate new modelling approaches that address in explicit manner the high spatial and temporal variability of forest disturbances. In this respect, machine learning approaches and the increasing availability of multi-platform satellite observations of land surface in combination with high regional climate model simulations, represent valuable opportunities to appraise the impact of forest disturbances at a spatial and temporal resolution relevant for forest management strategies. This explorative study represents a first step towards such integrated framework., JRC.D.1-Bio-economy

The study assesses how climate change could affect Europe in eleven impact areas. Under a high warming scenario, several climate impacts show a clear geographical north-south divide. Most of the welfare losses, assessed for six impact areas, would be greatly reduced under a 2ᵒC scenario., JRC.C.6-Economics of Climate Change, Energy and Transport

This report describes the main findings of Task 10, Mediterranean habitat loss, of the PESETA III project (Climate Impacts and Adaptation in Europe, focusing on Extremes, Adaptation and the 2030s). Using an approach that integrates results from 11 sectors, the main objective of the PESETA III project is to make a consistent multi-sectorial assessment of the projected impacts of climate change in Europe The Mediterranean region is one of the 36 global hotspots of biological diversity [1] and the most rich biodiversity region in Europe. Almost half of the plants and animals and more than half of the habitats listed in the EU Habitats Directive [2] occur in the Mediterranean region. However, this reservoir of biodiversity is threatened by climate-driven habitat loss, which is one of the most serious concerns for this region [3]. The aim of this study is first to assess projected changes in the spatial range of the Mediterranean climate domain (MCD) in Europe and its conversion into arid domain (ACD) under scenarios of climate change, and second to assess Natura 2000 sites that will be affected by these changes. We used 11 bias-adjusted Regional Climate Model (RCM) simulations for two representative concentration pathways’ scenarios at +4.5 W/m2 (RCP4.5) and +8.5 W/m2 (RCP8.5) for three periods: 2030s, 2° C warming and 2080s. Furthermore, we analysed adaptation options and its estimated economic cost in Mediterranean Natura 2000 protected areas., JRC.D.1-Bio-economy

Siglo XIX. Forma parte del álbum 17 Souvenir de Naples. Álbum

compilato da Achille Mauri

Siglo XIX. Forma parte del álbum 17 Souvenir de Naples. Álbum