Climate data for the forestry sector.

Plans are underway to plant millions, if not billions of trees in the coming years. But trees grow slowly and our climate is changing quickly. So, if we want these trees to survive and thrive over the next 30, 50 or 70 years, which species should we plant and where? 

In the absence of a crystal ball that can predict the future, we have to turn to scientific methods. Together with Tecnalia, we explored the potential of using Copernicus climate data combined with species observations to predict the future distribution of trees under different climate scenarios. The results of this approach can be seen in Forest Forward, a market study and web app demo we completed for the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts (ECMWF). In this project, we mapped the modelled distribution of commercially important tree species over the next 90 years under two climate change scenarios. It is intended to be an example of a different approach to long-term planning for the forestry sector.

This initiative has been organised within the framework of a Copernicus Climate Change Service (C3S) contract; C3S is one of the six services of the EU’s Copernicus Programme and is implemented by the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecast (ECMWF) on behalf of the European Commission.