ID69: The future of mountain forest regeneration

Details

  • Full Title

    Forest regeneration under pressure: can climate change and increasing disturbances undermine the resilience of mountain forest ecosystems?

  • Scheduled

  • Co-Conveners

    Harald Bugmann, Frank Krumm, Andrea Doris Kupferschmid, Renzo Motta, Marco Conedera, Gianni Boris Pezzatti, Rupert Seidl, Janneke Hille Ris Lambers, Emilie Champagne, Peter Bebi, Miroslav Svoboda

  • Assigned to Synthesis Workshop

    1. Mountain Ecosystems under Global Change

     

  • Keywords

    adaptation, browsing, experiments, global change, management, modelling, observations

Description

Tree regeneration is an essential component of forest resilience, hence key to ecosystem stability. Climate change, extreme climatic events and increasing natural abiotic and biotic disturbances strongly influence and may alter mountain forests and their regeneration, with cascading effects on different ecological processes, ultimately endangering the important ecosystem services provided by these forests, such as their protective function against natural hazards.

Regeneration in mountain forests is often scarce or declining due to unfavorable environmental conditions, dense overstory or biotic agents like ungulates. Natural disturbances inducing large-scale tree mortality potentially alter site conditions, such as vegetation and ungulate presence, and thus influence tree regeneration.

This session focusses on how climate and land-use change, and natural disturbances will affect tree regeneration, and how research can develop strategies to promote regeneration and sustain decision makers in their task of assuring mountain forest ecosystem services under uncertain future conditions.

Registered Abstracts

ID70: The impact of migration for rural and mountainous wellbeing
ID67: Sustainability of mountain social-ecological systems across Africa