No abstract

Climate change (CC) and land use and land cover change (LULCC) threaten Mediterranean forests and the ecosystem services (ES) they provide. In complex socio-ecological systems and under high uncertainties, the resilience of ES has become the target objective for adaptive management strategies driven by decision makers and local stakeholders. This work develops an integrative and territorial approach to combining biophysical modeling and local managers' assessments to elaborate scenarios of LULCC in response to climate and socioeconomic changes. It also evaluates the impacts of forest ecosystem changes on coupled ES for different time horizons for a case study of the mountain Mediterranean forests of Mont-Ventoux Natural Regional Park. The results demonstrate first that the future ES provisions predicted by biophysical modeling in this area are less affected by CC than expected by local managers. Furthermore, LULCC increases the changes in ES provision and accentuates the difference between climate scenarios. These results originate from a combination of two effects:(1) pessimistic predictions by local managers and, as a consequence and (2) anticipatory actions that tend to reinforce or even accelerate the expected changes in the mountain Mediterranean forest area.

In declining broadleaf forests in western Ukraine, several Phytophthora species including P. plurivora, P. bilorbang, P. polonica, P. gonapodyides and P. cactorum were recovered using soil baiting assays and identified using morphological and molecular methods. Pathogenicity tests of selected isolates were performed on black alder (Alnus glutinosa (L.) Gaerth.) and silver birch (Betula pendula Roth.) to assess susceptibility of these two tree species to the newly detected Phytophthora species. Phytophthora plurivora, P. bilorbang and P. polonica showed higher pathogenicity in both alder and birch compared to the other tested Phytophthora species.