Forest Resilience, Biodiversity, and Climate Change | Convention on Biological Diversity

"Forest Resilience, Biodiversity, and Climate Change" (pdf) is the latest publication from the UN Convention on Biological Diversity. (Hat tip: Greg H.)

Main points:

• The carbon storage capacity of forests and their role in mitigation is receiving increasing attention. In reality, mitigation and adaptation are two sides of the same coin.
• Protecting primary forests and restoring managed forests both help reduce emissions and aid societal adaptation to climate change.
• The capacity of forests to resist change, or recover following disturbance, is dependent on biodiversity at multiple scales.

Forest management recommendations:

• Avoid practices that select only certain trees for harvesting.
• Maintain stand and landscape structural complexity, using natural forests and processes as models.
• Maintain connectivity; reduce fragmentation.
• Eliminate conversion of natural forests to reduced-species plantations.
• Reduce reliance on non-native tree crop species for plantation, afforestation, or reforestation projects.
• Reduce the odds of long-term failure by apportioning some areas of assisted regeneration for trees from regional provenances and climates that approximate future conditions, based on climate modelling.
• Protect tree populations which are isolated, disjunct, or at margins of their distributions, source habitats, and refuge networks. These populations are most likely to represent pre-adapted gene pools for responding to climate change and could form core populations as conditions change.