Context

To help address risks to forest productivity, the UK Climate Change Committee’s Climate Change Risk Assessment (CCRA3) Evidence Report 2021 recommends ‘combined use of climate projections with socioeconomic scenarios to place UK domestic production within an international context’. Forest Research’s Forest Mensuration, Growth, and Yield Science Group has already created advanced tools that model how forests grow and change over time and are capable of projecting timber supply and forecast carbon stock changes. 

However, these models do not yet factor in how economics and adaptation policies influence forest management. This project aims to fill that gap using Forest Sector Models (tools that combine forest science with economics), to show how forests, markets, and management choices affect each other.  

Research aims and objectives

Aim:

Build the foundation for a new Forest Sector Model (FSM) to help the UK better manage and protect its forests. Use this model to combine biological and economic information to predict how biotic (biological organisms such as pests and diseases), and abiotic (physical factors such as climate change) risks could affect the health and productivity of UK forests, and explore different policy options to reduce these risks and help forests adapt over time.

Objectives:

• Understand how climate change, pests, and diseases could affect tree growth, forest health, timber markets, and the income and risks faced by forest landowners.  

• Explore how changes in profits and risks might influence the types of trees landowners choose to plant, and how this could shape the future of UK forests and timber supply.  

• Assess how different policies could help to reduce risks, support forest recovery, and increase resilience to future challenges. 

• Collaborate with FSM experts in France and Scandinavia, where these types of models are already used effectively.  

Expected outcomes

• In-depth understanding of French and Scandinavian FSM’s and how a similar approach may be applied to build a UK FSM (Stage 1). 

• Create a proof-of-concept UK FSM that shows how forests grow and change, how markets are affected, and how management decisions play a role (Stage 2).

• Share the technical findings of the project through at least one published journal article (Stage 2). 

• Create a simple summary of the findings, outlining how to increase forest resilience to climate change, relevant for landowners and practitioners, which will be made available on the Forest Research Climate Change Hub (Stage 2).