Climate future lab DIVERSA

During the drought period 2018 to 2022, the vulnerability of Germany’s forests to the escalating impacts of climate change became evident. However, our current understanding of the natural potential of forests to adapt to climate-change-induced disturbances is limited. A better knowledge of the causes and effects of disturbances is urgently needed to develop management strategies. Given that climate-induced disturbances will lead to changes in current forest states, the diverse perspectives of forest owners and managers, policy makers and the public need to be considered in decision making. The development of adaptive forest monitoring systems is vital to guide evidence-based decision-making, which can secure forest functioning in the future.

To address these challenges, DIVERSA has established a trans- and interdisciplinary research unit to enhance forest adaptability to climate change, focusing on Lower Saxony. The main objectives are:

1) Understanding forest climate change vulnerability by providing robust evidence of disturbance probability as a function of disturbance agents (storm, drought, pests and pathogens, fire), geophysical site conditions, management history, structural complexity and tree species diversity. We will combine remote sensing data, available disturbance monitoring tools and geodata and forest inventory and forest condition data.

2) Assessing the resistance and resilience of ecosystem functions and the response of biodiversity to disturbance by assessing the rate of structural and compositional change and its effects on selected forest functions. Biodiversity responses will be assessed by species surveys and structural diversity in rewilding (i.e. abandonment of management in previously managed forests to promote natural dynamics and self-regulation) and managed forests in state forests. This assessment will be supplemented by data on biodiversity collected by nature conservation authorities and citizen science platforms.

3) Understanding the perspectives of different forest owners, other stakeholders and the public on disturbed forests to implement participative, effective decision-making. Insight gained in DIVERSA will allow us to refine monitoring tools, provide decision support, and advise the management of Lower Saxony's forests in a rapidly changing world. DIVERSA will serve as a role model for establishing a permanent core research network on climate change adaptation, leveraging change towards a sustainable future for nature and people.

Together with the Forest Nature Conservation Lab, we implement Subproject 4, Dynamics of arthropod diversity and ecosystem functioning. We will focus on moths (Lepidoptera). We aim to quantify disturbance effects on moth communities and occupancy patterns field experiments and large citizen science datasets.
We will also quantify, model and predict the effects of forest disturbance on biocontrol and forest resistance to herbivore and pathogen damage. Finally, we will synthesize data across several DIVERSA subprojects to assess multifunctionality of multitrophic forest communities in response to disturbance.

Involved researchers (subproject 4): Johannes Kamp, Imran Khaliq

DIVERSA is funded by the as part of the “future labs” initiative initiated by the Lower Saxony Centre for Climate Research (ZKfN). It is headed up by the NW German forest research institute in Göttingen (NW-FVA).