Robust assessment of future forest development across Europe by 3D-CMCC Forest Ecosystem Model

We use latest version (v.5.2) of 3D-CMCC Forest Ecosystem Model(FEM) to evaluate the performances in simulating gross primary productivity (GPP) against eddy covariance GPP data for FLUXNET forest sites across Europe with different species composition. Moreover using four RCP climate scenarios along different future horizons we investigate possible biophysical feedbacks in the vegetation composition and structure due to different climate conditions. Different sensitivity experiments are conducted using the 3D-CMCC FEM trying to evaluate:1) the potential role of climate feedbacks within the forest ecosystems 2) the impact of climate variability and transient climate change on the ecosystem 3) the role of forest aging. The preliminary results demonstrate the importance of climate in regulating the forest productivity as well as forest aging over long periods: the forest scenarios produced can be used by policy-makers to explore the medium to long term consequences of planning made today and to formulate more robust decisions.