Modeling Forest Growth Under Current and Future Climate

Forests are integral to global ecological stability, climate regulation, and economic resilience. They function as major carbon sinks, act as biodiversity reservoirs, and provide ecosystem services. Accurately modeling forest growth is essential to predict ecosystem responses to climate change and optimize ecosystem services. However, predicting forest growth remains challenging due to complex interactions between ecological processes, external drivers like climate change, and intrinsic dynamics, such as legacy effects and emergent properties, that influence forest responses over time. This work provides a systematic in-depth analysis of both established and emerging theories as found in the literature, exploring their integration into modern forest growth modeling with a special focus on new approaches, as implemented in 18 forest growth models which vary in their structure, objectives, and overarching goals.