We have recently passed the 24 months (out of 48) mark of our project, and we are happy to share with you the summaries of our public-facing project deliverables that have been published by our consortium.
Important to note: all our public-facing deliverables are available on our website, in our “Resources” section, here
In recognition of the indispensable role of forests for a liveable and sustainable future, The European Union (EU) has developed policy frameworks aiming to leverage forest management solutions. Prominent among these policies are the European Green Deal, the New Circular Economy Action Plan, the New EU 2030 Forest Strategy, and multiple other guidelines and targets. A crucial cornerstone of the success of these policies is the ability to both monitor progress and assess policy impacts. D3.1 specifically engages with the latter challenge. Forest systems can be managed in different ways, prioritizing a different set of priorities, which can depend on future developments in the bio-economy, carbon sequestration policy, or biodiversity conservation, shaping future forest management. Moreover, forest systems are in constant interaction with developments in other land systems, such as agricultural and urban systems.
To capture the complexity of responses of forest systems to biophysical and socioeconomic drivers of change, land system models can be used. They simulate dynamics in land use, land cover, and land management in response to demands for land-based goods and services and accounting for zoning and other land use policies. While European forest systems have been included in land system models, previous applications lack thematic detail on different forest management regimes and miss important forest-specific drivers and attributes, as well as account poorly for ecosystem functioning, leading to unrealistic dynamics. In the Pathfinder project, land system models are to be developed that address these shortcomings, therefore creating models that can realistically inform policy makers.
The scope of this deliverable is to provide an update on the development of the land system models and the scenarios that will be simulated by this model. This includes inter alia, the description of the general modelling infrastructure, CLUMondo (Section 2), the development of the forest management map and its harmonization with non-forest land systems (Section 3), and the parameterization of probability surfaces and biophysical and socioeconomic drivers of change (Sections 4, 5, 6, 7).
Authors: VUA 🇳🇱
