GRECOFOR-CC - Growth of European coniferous forests in a warmer climatic regime
This project funded by Labex ARBRE is a binational project associating BFW (Department of Forest Inventory, Austria), started early 2017.
Website: mycor.nancy.inra.fr/ARBRE/GRECOFOR-CC
Based on collaboration between French and Austrian research inventory teams, the objectives are:
– to investigate recent growth trends and anomalies of major European coniferous tree species present in oceanic, continental and mountain ranges in Europe, and representative of contrasting climatic niches, under the unprecedently warm climatic regime of the past 15-20 years,
– to study their relationship with climatic factors to infer their possible long-term effects on their behaviour.
The studied species include Norway spruce, silver fir, Scots pine and European larch (in both countries) and maritime pine and Douglas fir in France only. They are studied in their natural and afforested and range sites, and within reference communities to accurately filter environment-driven growth signals.
The project will deliver an overview of recent growth trends in an extended set of European coniferous tree species, and will provide a substantial foundation for developing future indicators related to tree species and forest system performance, and tools to monitor how forests are impacted by climatic changes.
