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Why do citizens’ decisions made because they favour the mitigation of climate change outnumber those made because they favour adaptation to its impacts? Using data collected in a survey of 338 citizens of Malmö, Sweden, we tested two hypotheses. H1: the motivation for personal decisions because they favour adaptation to the impacts of climate change correlates with the decision-making agent´s knowledge of specific local impacts of climate change, and H2: the motivation for personal decisions because they favour mitigation of climate change correlates with the risk perception of the decision-making agent. While decisions made because they favour mitigation correlated with negative net values of expected impacts of climate change (risk perception), decisions made because they favour adaptation correlated with its absolute value unless tipping point behaviour occurred. Tipping point behaviour occurs here when the decision-making agent abstains from decisions in response to climate change in spite of a strongly negative or positive net value of expected impacts. Hence, the decision-making agents´ lack of knowledge of specific climate change impacts inhibited decisions promoting adaptation. Moreover, positive experiences of climate change inhibited mitigation decisions. Discussing the results, we emphasised the importance of understanding the drivers of adaptation and mitigation decisions. In particular, we stress that attention needs to be paid to the balance between decisions solving problems ‘here and now’ and those focusing on the ‘there and then’.

The role of values in climate-related decision-making is a prominent theme of climate communication research. The present study examines whether forest professionals are more driven by values than scientists are, and if this results in value polarization. A questionnaire was designed to elicit and assess the values assigned to expected effects of climate change by forest professionals and scientists working on forests and climate change in Europe. The countries involved covered a north-to-south and west-to-east gradient across Europe, representing a wide range of bio-climatic conditions and a mix of economic&ndash, social&ndash, political structures. We show that European forest professionals and scientists do not exhibit polarized expectations about the values of specific impacts of climate change on forests in their countries. In fact, few differences between forest professionals and scientists were found. However, there are interesting differences in the expected values of forest professionals with regard to climate change impacts across European countries. In Northern European countries, the aggregated values of the expected effects are more neutral than they are in Southern Europe, where they are more negative. Expectations about impacts on timber production, economic returns, and regulatory ecosystem services are mostly negative, while expectations about biodiversity and energy production are mostly positive.

A rationale for an individuals-oriented landscape approach to sustainable land-use planning based on an analysis of bio-geo-physical components as well as the human components of the landscape is presented. A toolbox for analysing individuals’ decision-making and valuations in the landscape is described. The toolbox can provide evidence on the drivers of individuals’ decision-making in the landscape and the decision strategies they apply. This evidence can be used to identify communication needs and to design guidelines for effective communication. The tool for value elicitation separates the instrumental values (means) and end values (goals) of individuals with respect to locations in the landscape. This distinction, and knowledge of the end values in the landscape, are critical for the achievement of policy goals and for spatial planning from a democratic point of view. The individuals-oriented landscape approach has roots in geography and draws on behavioural decision research together with a model for integrating “science and proven experience” that is widely used in public decision-making in the Nordic countries. The approach differs from other scholarly disciplines addressing sustainable land-use planning. It is suitable for application on decision-making problems that include trade-offs between values. An overview of empirical studies is provided in which the individuals-oriented landscape rationale is applied to climate change.

Beliefs, expectations and values are often assumed to drive decisions about climate change adaptation. We tested hypotheses based on this assumption using survey responses from 508 European forest professionals in ten countries. We used the survey results to identify communication needs and the decision strategies at play, and to develop guidelines on adequate communications about climate change adaptation. We observed polarization in the positive and negative values associated with climate change impacts accepted by survey respondents. We identified a mechanism creating the polarization that we call the ‘blocked belief’ effect. We found that polarized values did not correlate with decisions about climate change adaptation. Strong belief in the local impacts of climate change on the forest was, however, a prerequisite of decision-making favoring adaptation. Decision-making in favor of adaptation to climate change also correlated with net values of expected specific impacts on the forest and generally increased with the absolute value of these in the absence of ‘tipping point’ behavior. Tipping point behavior occurs when adaptation is not pursued in spite of the strongly negative or positive net value of expected climate change impacts. We observed negative and positive tipping point behavior, mainly in SW Europe and N-NE Europe, respectively. In addition we found that advice on effective adaptation may inhibit adaptation when the receiver is aware of effective adaptation measures unless it is balanced with information explaining how climate change leads to negative impacts. Forest professionals with weak expectations of impacts require communications on climate change and its impacts on forests before any advice on adaptation measures can be effective. We develop evidence-based guidelines on communications using a new methodology which includes Bayesian machine learning modeling of the equivalent of an expected utility function for the adaptation decision problem.

Climate vulnerability of managed forest ecosystems is not only determined by ecological processes but also influenced by the adaptive capacity of forest managers. To better understand adaptive behaviour, we conducted a questionnaire study among current and future forest managers (i.e. active managers and forestry students) in Austria. We found widespread belief in climate change (94.7 % of respondents), and no significant difference between current and future managers. Based on intended responses to climate-induced ecosystem changes, we distinguished four groups: highly sensitive managers (27.7 %), those mainly sensitive to changes in growth and regeneration processes (46.7 %), managers primarily sensitive to regeneration changes (11.2 %), and insensitive managers (14.4 %). Experiences and beliefs with regard to disturbance-related tree mortality were found to particularly influence a manager’s sensitivity to climate change. Our findings underline the importance of the social dimension of climate change adaptation, and suggest potentially strong adaptive feedbacks between ecosystems and their managers.

The European Commission expects the use of biomass for energy in the EU to increase significantly between 2010 and 2020 to meet a legally binding target to cover at least 20% of EU's total energy use from renewable sources in 2020. According to estimates made by the member states of the EU, the direct supply of biomass from forests is expected to increase by 45% on a volume basis between 2006 and 2020 in response to increasing demand (Beurskens LWM, Hekkenberg M, Vethman P. Renewable energy projections as published in the national renewable energy action plans of the European Member states. ECN and EEA; 2011. http://https://www.ecn.nl/docs/library/report/2010/e10069.pdf [accessed 25.04.2014]; Dees M, Yousef A, Ermert J. Analysis of the quantitative tables of the national renewable energy action plans prepared by the 27 European Union Member States in 2010. BEE working paper D7.2. Biomass Energy Europe project. FELIS Department of Remote Sensing and landscape information Systems, University of Freiburg, Germany; 2011). Our aims were to test the hypotheses that European private forest owners' attitudes towards supplying woody biomass for energy (1) can be explained by their responses to changes in prices and markets and (2) are positive so that the forest biomass share of the EU 2020 renewable energy target can be met. Based on survey data collected in 2010 from 800 private forest owners in Sweden, Germany and Portugal our results show that the respondents' attitudes towards supplying woody biomass for energy cannot be explained as direct responses to changes in prices and markets. Our results, furthermore, imply that European private forest owners cannot be expected to supply the requested amounts of woody biomass for energy to meet the forest biomass share of the EU 2020 renewable energy target, at least if stemwood is to play the important role as studies by Verkerk PJ, Anttila P, Eggers J, Lindner M, Asikainen A. The realisable potential supply of woody biomass from forests in the European Union. For Ecol Manag 2011;261: 2007-2015, UNECE and FAO. The European forest sector outlook study,II 2010-2030. United Nations, New York and Geneva; 2011 [abbreviated to EFSOS II] and Elbersen B, Staritsky I, Hengeveld G, Schelhaas MJ, Naeff H, Bottcher H. Atlas of EU biomass potentials; 2012. Available from: http://www.biomassfutures.eu [accessed 14.10.2013] suggest. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Wind is the most detrimental disturbance agent in Europe's forest ecosystems. In recent years, disturbance frequency and severity have been increasing at continental scale, a trend that is expected to continue under future anthropogenic climate change. Disturbance management is thus increasingly important for sustainable stewardship of forests, and requires tools to evaluate the effects of management alternatives and climatic changes on disturbance risk and ecosystem services. We here present a process-based model of wind disturbance impacts on forest ecosystems, integrated into the dynamic landscape simulation model iLand. The model operates at the level of individual trees and simulates wind disturbance events iteratively, i.e., dynamically accounting for changes in forest structure and newly created edges during the course of a storm. Both upwind gap size and local shelter from neighboring trees are considered in this regard, and critical wind speeds for uprooting and stem breakage are distinguished. The simulated disturbance size, pattern, and severity are thus emergent properties of the model. We evaluated the new simulation tool against satellite-derived data on the impact of the storm Gudrun (January 2005) on a 1391?ha forest landscape in south central Sweden. Both the overall damage percentage (observation: 21.7%, simulation: 21.4%) as well as the comparison of spatial damage patterns showed good correspondence between observations and predictions (prediction accuracy: 60.4%) if the full satellite-derived structural and spatial heterogeneity of the landscape was taken into account. Neglecting within-stand heterogeneity in forest conditions, i.e., the state-of-the-art in many stand-level risk models, resulted in a considerable underestimation of simulated damage, supporting the notion that tree-level complexity matters for assessing and modeling large-scale disturbances. A sensitivity analysis further showed that changes in wind speed and soil freezing could have potentially large impacts on disturbed area and patch size. The model presented here is available as open source. It can be used to study the effects of different silvicultural systems and future climates on wind risk, as well as to quantify the impacts of wind disturbance on ecosystem services such as carbon sequestration. It thus contributes to improving our capacity to address changing disturbance regimes in ecosystem management. We present a process-based model of wind disturbance impacts on forest landscapes.Stand structure is iteratively updated during a wind event.Disturbance size, pattern, and severity emerge dynamically from tree-level processes.We successfully evaluated the model against observations from the storm Gudrun.Neglecting structural and spatial heterogeneity resulted in underestimated damage.

Recent studies projecting future climate change impacts on forests mainly consider either the effects of climate change on productivity or on disturbances. However, productivity and disturbances are intrinsically linked because 1) disturbances directly affect forest productivity (e.g. via a reduction in leaf area, growing stock or resource-use efficiency), and 2) disturbance susceptibility is often coupled to a certain development phase of the forest with productivity determining the time a forest is in this specific phase of susceptibility. The objective of this paper is to provide an overview of forest productivity changes in different forest regions in Europe under climate change, and partition these changes into effects induced by climate change alone and by climate change and disturbances. We present projections of climate change impacts on forest productivity from state-of-the-art forest models that dynamically simulate forest productivity and the effects of the main European disturbance agents (fire, storm, insects), driven by the same climate scenario in seven forest case studies along a large climatic gradient throughout Europe. Our study shows that, in most cases, including disturbances in the simulations exaggerate ongoing productivity declines or cancel out productivity gains in response to climate change. In fewer cases, disturbances also increase productivity or buffer climate-change induced productivity losses, e.g. because low severity fires can alleviate resource competition and increase fertilization. Even though our results cannot simply be extrapolated to other types of forests and disturbances, we argue that it is necessary to interpret climate change-induced productivity and disturbance changes jointly to capture the full range of climate change impacts on forests and to plan adaptation measures., published version, peerReviewed

PurposeRecent climate scenarios indicate that Sweden's southern region, Götaland, will experience significant climate change over the coming century. Swedish forestry policy guidelines emphasize the need for risk spreading to reduce the potential adverse impacts of these changes. Risk spreading is defined here as reducing the vulnerability of a social‐ecological system by increasing the heterogeneity of its ecological components. Risk spreading may be achieved through the diversification of tree species currently relied upon by the forestry sector. The purpose of this paper is to consider the capacity of the socio‐ecological forest system to adapt to climate change through the use of risk spreading.Design/methodology/approachA variety of disciplines contribute to the understanding of the rate at which risk spreading is likely to take place in a system. A synthesis is conducted to unite these insights.FindingsFive key constraints on the rate at which risk spreading can take place are identified. These include constraints imposed by the silvicultural system itself, voluntary policy measures, forest‐owner perceptions of climate change, motivation among forest owners to respond to risk, and forestry consultants. Potential future directions are discussed and include the need for specifying the goal of risk spreading policy, and the need to evaluate the motivations of those forest owners already altering adopting risk spreading approaches.Originality/valueConceptual equivalents of the “risk spreading” approach are international, due to the need for many societies to adapt social‐ecological systems to climate change. The issues raised from this case study/synthesis provide value insights regarding the breadth of systemic constraints which can thwart attempts at rapid adjustment to climate change, and where solutions to these constraints may be found.

An integrated system of models, WINDA, is presented for calculating the stand-wise probabilities of wind damage, uprooting and breakage of trees within a landscape. The calculations are made point-wise at exposed stand edges. WINDA integrates a modified version of the dose/response model HWIND [Can. J. For. Res. 29 (1999) 647], the airflow model WASP [Wind Atlas Analysis and Application Program (WASP), Riso National Laboratory, Roskilde, Denmark], and a component for calculating the zero-plane displacement and surface roughness and uses a GIS for geographical computations. The likelihood of damage is calculated using extreme value theory. WINDA was able to predict damage that compared well with observed extensive damage within 6.7 km 2 large landscape in southern Sweden. Output from the system of models was most sensitive to modifications in the input variables tree height and diameter at breast height and to the internal parameter critical friction velocity. The mechanistic modelling approach makes WINDA useful for evaluating effects on the probability of wind damage of silvicultural treatments and forestry activities as well as of a changed climate.

Fluorescence characteristics and growth of seedling snow gum (Eucalyptus pauciflora Sieb. ex Spreng.) during autumn and winter were related to variation in radiation and temperature regime in a fragmented forest. Seedlings were planted in four treatments along transects perpendicular to tree island edges to characterize plant responses to microclimates ranging from those of cleared areas to those beneath forest canopies. Three-dimensional mapping of seedling leaf display, in combination with information retrieved from hemispherical photographs about shading from overstory canopies, were used to calculate the intercepted amounts of direct radiation energy for unit area of leaves on clear days (IDRE). IDRE was highest on the outside, most variable at the edges and lowest well inside the tree islands. Minimum temperature decreased with increasing view of the sky. Photoinhibition, measured as decrease in Fv/Fm, was correlated with spatial and seasonal differences in weekly minimum temperature and IDRE. Seedlings in the open and under the most canopy cover, with low variability in IDRE in a scale of weeks, exhibited less variability in photoinhibition than those growing along forest edges. Seedlings in the open tended to be most photoinhibited and grew the most. The combination of increased IDRE with reduced minimum temperatures resulted in persistent and strong photoinhibition as the season progressed. Results are discussed in relation to the potential for seedling establishment following forest fragmentation.

Uncertainty, insufficient information or information of poor quality, limited cognitive capacity and time, along with value conflicts and ethical considerations, are all aspects that make risk management and risk communication difficult. This paper provides a review of different risk concepts and describes how these influence risk management, communication, and planning in relation to forest ecosystem services. Based on the review and results of empirical studies, we suggest that personal assessment of risk is decisive for in the management of forest ecosystem services. The results are used together with a review of different principles of the distribution of risk to propose an approach to risk communication that is effective as well as ethically sound. Knowledge of heuristics and mutual information on both beliefs and desires are important in the proposed risk communication approach. Such knowledge provides an opportunity for relevant information exchange, so that gaps in personal knowledge maps can be filled in and effective risk communication can be promoted.

The climate change adaptation tool Local Climate Impacts Profile (LCLIP), developed and previously widely used in the UK, was systematically evaluated in terms of its transferability to Sweden and its usefulness as a catalyst for awareness-raising and action with respect to climate change adaptation. The tool includes scoping, media trawl, interviews and reporting and was applied in three Swedish municipalities. It was found that after some adjustment, the tool can be applied successfully under Swedish conditions. The municipalities involved found the results useful for stimulating local adaptation work. However, the municipalities concluded that LCLIP is primarily a beginner’s tool that can be applied at a low cost and that other, more costly investigations on vulnerability to extreme weather typically need to be conducted for successful adaptation to climate change at municipal level. An advantage of the LCLIP tool is that it involves civil servants from all departments in the municipality and thus the resulting vulnerability discussions also involve departments dealing with ‘soft’ issues, such as administration and care.

Wind is the dominant agent of damage in forests in Western Europe. Traditional winddamage models calculate a probability for damage or a critical wind speed at which damage occurs. However, in a dynamic vegetation model actual damage to stands and individual trees is needed to get a dynamical progression of the vegetation. We present a prototype for a new approach to modelling forest wind damage at the regional scale, which we incorporate within a dynamic vegetation model. The approach is based on knowledge from both empirical and mechanical models and calculates the damaged fraction of a cohort based on wind load and a sensitivity that depends on the current physical state and history of the cohort in relation to the ecosystem. The modelling concept has been developed, calibrated and evaluated for Swedish conditions but can be applicable to other similar areas with minor modification. Because of the stochastic nature of local wind load and the difficulty of describing the stand-level exposure, the ability to explain observed damage at stand level was low. Regional level variation in damage, which more depends on the wind load, was however explained reasonably well (R2 = 0.43). We suggest that this is a useful concept for evaluating alternatives of forest management under different climate scenarios in the process of adaptation to future storm-damage risks.

Knowledge of factors that trigger human response to climate change is crucial for effective climate change policy communication. Climate change has been claimed to have low salience as a risk issue because it cannot be directly experienced. Still, personal factors such as strength of belief in local effects of climate change have been shown to correlate strongly with responses to climate change and there is a growing literature on the hypothesis that personal experience of climate change (and/or its effects) explains responses to climate change. Here we provide, using survey data from 845 private forest owners operating in a wide range of bio-climatic as well as economic-social-political structures in a latitudinal gradient across Europe, the first evidence that the personal strength of belief and perception of local effects of climate change, highly significantly explain human responses to climate change. A logistic regression model was fitted to the two variables, estimating expected probabilities ranging from 0.07 (SD 60.01) to 0.81 (SD 60.03) for self-reported adaptive measures taken. Adding socio-demographic variables improved the fit, estimating expected probabilities ranging from 0.022 (SD 60.008) to 0.91 (SD 60.02). We conclude that to explain and predict adaptation to climate change, the combination of personal experience and belief must be considered.

International audience; This study deals with the problem of including the risk of wind damage in long-term forestry management. A model based on Graph-Based Markov Decision Processes (GMDP) is suggested for development of silvicultural management policies. The model can both take stochastic wind events into account and be applied to forest estates containing a large number of stands. The model is demonstrated for a forest estate in southern Sweden. Treatment of the stands according to the management policy specified by the GMDP model increased the expected net present value (NPV) of the whole forest only slightly, less than 2%, under different wind-risk assumptions. Most of the stands were managed in the same manner as when the risk of wind damage was not considered. For the stands that were treated differently, however, the expected NPV increased by 3% to 8%.

Strong winds cause severe damage worldwide to forested land every year. The devastating storms that struck large parts of Europe in late 1999 destroyed the equivalent of several years of normal forest harvesting, amounting to very large economical sums. Therefore, rapid mapping of damaged areas is of major importance for assessment of short-term actions as well as for long-term reforestation purposes. In this paper, the use of airborne CARABAS-II very high frequency (VHF) (20-90 MHz) synthetic aperture radar (SAR) imagery for high spatial resolution mapping of wind-thrown forests has been investigated and evaluated. The investigation was performed at a test site located in southern Sweden and dominated by Norway spruce forests. A regression model estimating radar backscattering amplitude prior to the storm was developed. The estimated amplitudes were compared to measured amplitudes after the storm. The results clearly show that the backscattering amplitude, at a given stem volume, is considerably higher for wind-thrown forests than for unaffected forests. Furthermore, the backscattering from fully harvested storm-damaged areas was, as expected, significantly lower than from unaffected stands. These findings imply that VHF SAR imagery has potential for mapping wind-thrown forests. However, to prevent ambiguities in increased backscattering caused by normal stem volume growth or wind-fellings, multitemporal change detection techniques using VHF SAR images acquired prior to and after wind-fellings would be preferable.