Vulnerability of Spanish forests under climatic change: evaluation through models

Abstract

Ruiz-Benito, P., Herrero, A., Zavala, M.A. 2013. Vulnerability of Spanish forests under climatic change: evaluation through models. Ecosistemas 22(3):21-28. Doi.: 10.7818/ECOS.2013.22-3.04

Forest ecosystems contribute to human well-being providing critical ecosystem services. Global change (including climate and land-use changes), however, can alter ecosystem functioning and structure, even jeopardizing the future supply of ecosystem services. Vulnerability to global change depends on exposition (magnitude of the change), sensitivity (susceptibility to the change), and adaptive capacity (ability to adjust to the change) of the species. Here, we summarize diverse modeling approaches to analyze the different components of vulnerability, providing specific examples focused on Iberian forests. Despite of these advances, our empirical and theoretical ability to provide integrated assessments of potential impacts (i.e. including both exposition and sensitivity) of climate change and adaptive capacity is still very limited. An adequate estimation of vulnerability requires improving our knowledge about the adaptive capacity of species and their response to extreme environmental changes (e.g. through long-term monitoring networks), as well as integrating the knowledge obtained from models developed at different levels of biological organization, from physiological process-based models to aggregated species distribution models.