REGE-ADAPT

Climate change affects forests' capacity to provide nature's contributions to people (NCP, such as wood production or watershed regulation) and to support biodiversity. The future adaptation and resilience of forest socio-ecosystems will depend on forest renewal and regeneration, i.e. the natural or artificial re-establishment of trees following natural disturbances or harvesting. Regeneration trajectories will be influenced by ecological processes as well as management decisions, which should take into account societal preferences, values, and governance contexts.

We need a better understanding of how regeneration trajectories will evolve under ongoing climate change, how they can be managed to promote forest adaptation while preserving biodiversity, soils, and adaptive socio-ecological capacities (ASCs), and how regeneration processes can be governed. This targeted project aims to address these knowledge gaps.

The main aims of the project are to :

• Improve our understanding of the forest regeneration phase (ecological and genetic processes) and its effects on forest resistance, resilience, and transformation;
• Analyse how forest regeneration can be managed to establish climate-adapted forests while maintaining ASCs and biodiversity at local and landscape scales;
• Explore the governance of forest regeneration adaptation and the future trajectories of forest socio-ecological systems.