Reconstructing European forest management from 1600 to 2010

Abstract

Abstract. Because of the slow accumulation and long residence time of carbon in biomass and soils, the present state and future dynamics of temperate forests are influenced by management that took place centuries to millennia ago. Humans have exploited the forests of Europe for fuel, construction materials and fodder for the entire Holocene. In recent centuries, economic and demographic trends led to increases in both forest area and management intensity across much of Europe. In order to quantify the effects of these changes in forests and to provide a baseline for studies on future land-cover-climate interactions and biogeochemical cycling, we created a temporally and spatially resolved reconstruction of European forest management from 1600 to 2010. For the period 1600-1828, we took a supply-demand approach, in which supply was estimated on the basis of historical annual wood increment and land cover reconstructions. We made demand estimates by multiplying population with consumption factors for construction materials, household fuelwood, industrial food processing and brewing, metallurgy, and salt production. For the period 1829-2010, we used a supply-driven backcasting method based on national and regional statistics of forest age structure from the second half of the 20th century. Our reconstruction reproduces the most important changes in forest management between 1600 and 2010: (1) an increase of 593 000 km 2 in conifers at the expense of deciduous forest (decreasing by 538 000 km 2 ); (2) a 612 000 km 2 decrease in unmanaged forest; (3) a 152 000 km 2 decrease in coppice management; (4) a 818 000 km 2 increase in high-stand management; and (5) the rise and fall of litter raking, which at its peak in 1853 resulted in the removal of 50 Tg dry litter per year.

The PMIP4 contribution to CMIP6 – Part 3: The last millennium, scientific objective, and experimental design for the PMIP4 <i>past1000</i> simulations

“…To build these scenarios, an estimate of a baseline wood demand following McGrath et al (2015) was compiled. To account for differences between continents and technology-induced changes in consumption patterns over time, the wood demand was scaled by historical, country-level estimates of gross domestic product (GDP) (Maddison, 2003;Bolt and van Zanden, 2014) (see Appendix A5.1 for details).…”

Evaluating and Improving the Community Land Model's Sensitivity to Land Cover

“…While the forested area has stabilized or is even increasing over Europe and North America, deforestation is still ongoing at a fast pace in some areas of South America, Africa, and south-east Asia (Huang et al, 2009;Hansen et al, 2013;Margono et al, 2014;McGrath et al, 2015). In addition, carbon sequestration by re-or afforestation has been proposed as a strategy to mitigate anthropogenic climate change (Brown et al, 1996;Sonntag et al, 2016), making forest loss or gain likely an essential 5 component of future climate change.…”

Representing anthropogenic gross land use change, wood harvest, and forest age dynamics in a global vegetation model ORCHIDEE-MICT v8.4.2

“…This can effectively simulate forest management practices that induce rotations of different forest cohorts (e.g. see McGrath et al, 2015, for a forest management history in Europe).…”