Tradeoffs in using European forests to meet climate objectives

The Paris Agreement advances forest management as one of the pathways to halt climate warming through carbon dioxide (CO(2)) emission reduction1. The climate benefits from carbon sequestration from forest management may, however, be reinforced, counteracted, or even offset by concurrent management-induced changes in surface albedo, surface roughness, biogenic volatile organic compound emissions, transpiration, and sensible heat flux2–4. Forest management could, thus, offset CO(2) emissions without halting global temperature rise. It remains, therefore, to be confirmed that sustainable forest management portfolios for the end of the 21(st)-century for Europe would comply with the Paris Agreement, i.e., reduce the growth rate of atmospheric CO(2), reduce the radiative imbalance at the top of the atmosphere, and neither increase the near-surface air temperature nor decrease precipitation. Here we show that a spatially-optimized portfolio that maximises the carbon sink through carbon sequestration, wood use and product and energy substitution, reduces the growth rate of atmospheric CO(2) but does not meet any of the other criteria. The portfolios that maximise the carbon sink or forest albedo pass only one, albeit different, criterion. Managing the European forests with the objective to reduce near-surface air temperature, on the other hand, will also reduce the atmospheric CO(2) growth rate, thus meeting two out of four criteria. Our results demonstrate that if present-day forest cover is sustained, the additional climate benefits through forest management would be modest and local rather than global. Based on these findings we argue that if adaptation would require large-scale changes in species composition and silvicultural systems over Europe5,6, these changes could be implemented with little unintended climate effects.