Alessio Collalti

Italian National Research Council | CNR · Institute for Agricultural and Forestry Systems in the Mediterranean

Forest production efficiency (FPE) metric describes how efficiently the assimilated carbon is partitioned into plants organs (biomass production, BP) or-more generally-for the production of organic matter (net primary production, NPP). We present a global analysis of the relationship of FPE to stand-age and climate, based on a large compilation of...

Two simplifying hypotheses have been proposed for whole‐plant respiration. One links respiration to photosynthesis; the other to biomass. Using a first‐principles carbon balance model with a prescribed live woody biomass turnover, applied at a forest research site where multidecadal measurements are available for comparison, we show that if turnove...

Gross primary production (GPP) is partitioned to autotrophic respiration (Ra) and net primary production (NPP), the latter being used to build plant tissues and synthesize non-structural and secondary compounds. Waring et al. (1998) suggested that a NPP:GPP ratio of 0.47 ± 0.04 (s.d.) is universal across biomes, tree species and stand ages. Represe...

The climate change over the Mediterranean region poses serious concerns about the role of open vegetation fires in the emissions of climate-altering species. The aim of this work is to review the current methodologies for quantifying the emissions of greenhouse gases and black carbon from open vegetation fires, as well as the data provided by four...

Purpose of Review Forests are integral to global ecological stability, climate regulation, and economic resilience. They function as major carbon sinks, act as biodiversity reservoirs, and provide ecosystem services. Accurately modeling forest growth is essential to predict ecosystem responses to climate change and optimize ecosystem services. Howe...

Tropospheric ozone (O3) concentrations in the Northern Hemisphere have significantly increased since the pre-industrial era, with ongoing growth driven by emissions from industrial, agricultural, and transportation activities, further exacerbated by the warming temperatures and altered atmospheric circulation patterns associated with climate change...

Forest ecosystems account for about one-third of the Earth's land area, and monitoring their structure and dynamics is essential for understanding the land's carbon cycle and its role in the greenhouse gas balance. In this framework, process-based forest models (PBFMs) allow studying, monitoring and predicting forest growth and dynamics, capturing...

The book ‘Monitoring and Predicting Forest Growth and Dynamics’ describes the theoretical background underlying the ‘Three Dimensional — Coupled Model Carbon Cycle — Forest Ecosystem Module’ (3D-CMCC-FEM), developed by Alessio Collalti and his team at the Forest Modelling Laboratory of the National Research Council of Italy. The model is, in our vi...

The consequences of climate change continue to threaten European forests, particularly for species located at the edges of their latitudinal and altitudinal ranges. While extensively studied in Central Europe, European beech forests require further investigation to understand how climate change will affect these ecosystems in Mediterranean areas. P...

The impacts of climate uncertainty pose important questions regarding the capability of forest ecosystems to buffer current and future climate-induced global changes while still delivering ecosystem services as society demands and future policy requirements advocate (e.g., the European Green Deal). Medium- to long-term forest dynamics (growth, comp...

Tropical deforestation in the African continent plays a key role in the global carbon cycle and bears significant implications in terms of climate change and sustainable development. Especially in Sub-Saharan Africa, where more than two-thirds of the population rely on forest and woodland resources for their livelihoods, deforestation and land use...

The observed and projected climate change over the Mediterranean region poses serious concerns about the role of open vegetation fires (OVFs) in the emissions of climate-altering species. The aim of this study is dual. First, to review existing methodologies to quantify the greenhouse gases (GHGs) and black carbon (BC) emissions from OVFs. Then, by...

Stand age significantly influences the functioning of forest ecosystems by shaping structural and physiological plant traits, affecting water and carbon budgets. Forest age distribution is determined by the interplay of tree mortality and regeneration, influenced by both natural and anthropogenic disturbances. Unfortunately, human-driven alteration...

In an era marked by unprecedented climate shifts, understanding the intricate responses of forest ecosystems to these changes is of paramount importance. The research presented in this Special Issue delves deeply into various dimensions of forest dynamics under the influence of climate change, offering critical insights that can guide effective con...

Implementation of the natural regeneration dynamics module in the 3D-CMCC-FEM process-based model that drives the development of new saplings from seeds accounting for the environmental variables such as light on the forest floor, temperature, and soil water availability.

Through photosynthesis, forests absorb annually large amounts of atmospheric CO2. However, they also release CO2 back through respiration. These two, opposite in sign, large fluxes determine how much of the carbon is stored or released back into the atmosphere. The mean seasonal cycle (MSC) is an interesting metric that associates phenology and car...

Carbon assimilation and wood production are influenced by environmental conditions and endogenous factors, such as species auto-ecology, age, and hierarchical position within the forest structure. Disentangling the intricate relationships between those factors is more pressing than ever due to climate change's pressure. We employed the 3D-CMCC-FEM...

Carbon assimilation and wood production are influenced by environmental conditions and endogenous factors, such as species auto-ecology, age, and hierarchical position within the forest structure. Disentangling the intricate relationships between those factors is more pressing than ever before due to the pressure of climate change. Yet, our underst...

Through photosynthesis, forests absorb annually large amounts of atmospheric CO2. However, they also release CO2 back through respiration. These two, opposite in sign, large fluxes determine, much of the carbon that is stored or released back to the atmosphere. The mean seasonal cycle (MSC) is an interesting metric that associate phenology and carb...

Tropical deforestation in the African continent plays a key role in the global carbon cycle and bears significant implications in terms of climate change and sustainable development. Especially in Sub-Saharan Africa, where more than two-thirds of the population rely on forest and woodland resources for their livelihoods, deforestation and land use...

Process-based forest models combine biological, physical, and chemical process understanding to simulate forest dynamics as an emergent property of the system. As such, they are valuable tools to investigate the effects of climate change on forest ecosystems. Specifically, they allow testing of hypotheses regarding long-term ecosystem dynamics and...

Tree mortality and forest dieback episodes are increasing due to drought and heat stress. Nevertheless, a comprehensive understanding of mechanisms enabling trees to withstand and survive droughts remains lacking. Our study investigated basal area increment (BAI), and δ¹³C-derived intrinsic water-use-efficiency (iWUE), to elucidate beech resilience...

Boreal forest sinks one third of terrestrial carbon (C), playing a crucial role in mitigating climate change. However, our understanding of the relationship between carbon assimilation and its allocation into woody biomass production remains limited. To address this gap, we propose a novel approach that combines eddy covariance (EC), wood anatomy i...

The Mediterranean basin is a well-known drought-prone region, making forest ecosystems potentially vulnerable to drought episodes, heat waves and dry spells. In the last two decades, extreme weather events affected different regions of Europe including mediterranean áreas. This led to significant impacts on forest ecosystems, with extensive mortali...

A forest type (FT) generally describes a category of forest defined by its composition, and/or site-specific factors, and used in a system suitable to the situation at country level. The FTs are recognised to be a flexible approach to support the collection of data and organise forest indicators in a given area at different spatial scales, from cou...

Climate change is endangering natural and anthropogenic ecosystems, as pointed out by the recent IPCC Reports and the COPs' statements. The impacts of climate change on natural ecosystems can affect their production capacity, particularly in those systems characterized by a high quality of yields, especially in densely populated and industrialized...

Tree age plays an essential role in forest ecosystems' functioning by affecting structural and physiological plant traits that modulate the water and carbon budgets. On the other hand, tree age distribution in forests depends on population dynamics and, therefore, on the balance between tree mortality and regeneration events, which are ultimately c...

According to the IPCC and the Paris Agreement, the imperative to limit global warming to 1.5°C, or well below 2°C, compared to the pre-industrial era, necessitates achieving a balance between anthropogenic emissions by sources and removals by sinks (net-zero anthropogenic CO2 emissions) by the second half of this century. In this context, a prerequ...

Forest types are key factors to consider when monitoring forests, particularly in consideration of the increasing need to assess how climate change is affecting different forests in Europe and beyond. A comprehensive classification system is indeed essential for understanding the diverse forest ecosystems, tracking their changes over time and acros...

Terrestrial ecosystems have been serving as a strong carbon sink that offsets one quarter of anthropogenic CO2 emissions. Carbon use efficiency (CUE), the percentage of photosynthesized carbon that is available for biomass production and other secondary carbon products, is one factor determining the carbon sink size. The global variation in CUE rem...

The present deliverable reports on forest management practices in the case study areas (CSAs) of OptFor-EU and their relevance in the CSAs. The first section includes the context of this deliverable. The second section includes the general modeling framework, a literature review of forest management practices, detailed descriptions of current manag...

Carbon storage in harvested wood products (HWPs) and the associated substitution effects resulting from their utilization over fossil fuels and energy-intensive materials are pivotal strategies in climate change mitigation. Recognition of this nature-based solution as integral to climate change mitigation targets is notably solidified in many Natio...

Stand age significantly influences the functioning of forest ecosystems by shaping structural and physiological plant traits, affecting water and carbon budgets. Forest age distribution is determined by the interplay of tree mortality and regeneration, influenced by both natural and anthropogenic disturbances. Thus, human-driven alteration of tree...

Process-based Forest Models (PBFMs) offer the possibility to capture important spatial and temporal patterns of both carbon fluxes and stocks in forests, accounting for ecophysiological, climate and geographical variability. Yet, their predictive capacity should be demonstrated not only at the stand-level but also in the context of large spatial an...

Tree mortality and forest dieback episodes are increasing due to drought and heat stress. Nevertheless, a comprehensive understanding of mechanisms enabling trees to withstand and survive droughts remains lacking. Our study investigated basal area increment (BAI), and δ13C-derived intrinsic water-use-efficiency (iWUE), to elucidate beech resilience...

Human population activity is causing changes for both climate and forest lands with negative impacts on these ecosystems, increasing disturbances and reducing the ecosystem services they provide. Indeed, forests contribute to mitigate the climate change through the carbon uptake and tree store it in their biomass. Therefore, to preserve these mecha...

The prediction of atmospheric CO2 concentrations is limited by the high interannual variability (IAV) in terrestrial gross primary productivity (GPP). However, there are large uncertainties in the drivers of GPP IAV among Earth system models (ESMs). Here, we evaluate the impact of these uncertainties on the predictability of atmospheric CO2 in six...

Abstract This is the 3D-CMCC-FEM (Three Dimensional - Coupled Model Carbon Cycle - Forest Ecosystem Model) user guide for the version 5.5-ISIMIP and 5.6. The 3D-CMCC-FEM is a biochemical, biophysical process-based model and is basically a research tool which is freely available only for non-commercial use. This user guide describes the essential st...

Process-based Forest Models (PBFMs) offer the possibility to capture important spatial and temporal patterns of both carbon fluxes and stocks in forests, accounting for ecophysiological, climate and geographical variability. Yet, their predictive capacity should be demonstrated not only at the stand-level but also in the context of large spatial an...

Microclimate research gained renewed interest over the last decade and its importance for many ecological processes is increasingly being recognized. Consequently, the call for high-resolution microclimatic temperature grids across broad spatial extents is becoming more pressing to improve ecological models. Here, we provide a new set of open-acces...

To assess the degree to which it has met its commitments under the Paris Agreement, Morocco is called upon to carry out carbon assessments and transparent evaluations. Within the forestry sector, little is known about the role of Morocco's forests in contributing to carbon uptake. With this aim, we applied for the first time in the literature the 3...

Mediterranean pine plantations provide several ecosystem services but are vulnerable to climate change. Forest management might play a strategic role in the adaptation of Mediterranean forests, but the joint effect of climate change and diverse management options have seldom been investigated together. Here, we simulated the development of a Larici...

The prediction of atmospheric CO2 concentrations is limited by the high interannual variability (IAV) of terrestrial gross primary productivity (GPP). However, there are large uncertainties in the drivers of GPP IAV among Earth system models (ESMs). Here, we evaluate the impact of these uncertainties on the predictability of atmospheric CO2 in six...

To assess the degree to which it has met its commitments under the Paris Agreement, Morocco is called upon to carry out carbon assessments and transparent evaluations. Within the forestry sector, little is known about the role of Morocco's forests in contributing to carbon uptake. With this aim, we applied for the first time in literature the 3-PG...

Forest management practices might act as nature-based methods to remove CO2 from the atmosphere and slow anthropogenic climate change and thus support an EU forest-based climate change mitigation strategy. However, the extent to which diversified management actions could lead to quantitatively important changes in carbon sequestration and stocking...

In the paper by Haesen et al. (2021), a coding mistake was found in the calculation of the monthly mean temperature offset values, which were used as the response variable in the model. Particularly, when calculating the monthly mean temperatures of each of the in situ temperature time series, these time series were shifted half a month forward lea...

Simulazione dell'accoppiamento tra assimilazione del carbonio ed accrescimenti in quattro siti forestali "Eddy-Covariance"

Forest management practices might act as nature-based methods to remove CO2 from the atmosphere and slow anthropogenic climate change and thus support an EU forest-based climate change mitigation strategy. However, the extent to which diversified management actions could lead to quantitatively important changes in carbon sequestration and stocking...

The Inter-Sectoral Impact Model Intercomparison Project (ISIMIP) provides a framework for the collation of a set of consistent, multi-sector, multi-scale climate-impact simulations, based on scientifically and politically relevant historical and future scenarios. This framework serves as a basis for robust projections of climate impacts, as well as...

Forest models are instrumental for understanding and projecting the impact of climate change on forests. A considerable number of forest models have been developed in the last decades. However, few systematic and comprehensive model comparisons have been performed in Europe that combine an evaluation of modelled carbon and water fluxes and forest s...

Although it is an integral part of global change, most of the research addressing the effects of climate change on forests have overlooked the role of environmental pollution. Similarly , most studies investigating effects of air pollutants on forests have generally neglected impacts of climate change. We review the current knowledge on combined ai...

The 3D-CMCC-FEM (“Three Dimensional - Coupled Model Carbon Cycle - Forest Ecosystem Model”) is a computer model and is primarily a research tool, and many versions have been developed for specific purposes. The National Research Council of Italy and University of Tuscia maintain benchmark code versions for public release and update these benchmark...

Forest ecosystems contribute significantly to the global carbon cycle by absorbing and storing CO 2 , thus potentially mitigating the effuects of anthropogenic climate change. The Mediterranean region, one of the world's biodiversity and climate change hotspots, is projected to become dryer and warmer in the future, with an increased likelihood of...

The Mediterranean basin is a well-known drought-prone region, nevertheless it has been affuected by unprecedented extreme climate events over the last decades which are projected to lead to an even drier and warmer climate in this region. Process-based forest models are versatile tools being able to simulate forest stand growth and structure under...

Forest management can aid buffuering anthropogenic climate change, thus playing a strategic role in the framework of the EU forestry-based carbon mitigation strategy, in particular in Central and Northern Europe. To what extent a diversified management portfolio would lead to effuective changes in carbon sequestration potential at the tree level re...

We present an R-based tool that allows to set up and run the Three Dimensional-Coupled Model Carbon Cycle-Forest Ecosystem Model (3D-CMCC-FEM). It provides an intuitive interface to perform model simulations controlling several parameters while implementing consistency checks on the model inputs. The overall tool consists of a folder containing the...

Gross Primary Productivity, tree growth and carbon reserve under climate change: the modelling case study of a dieback Quercus forest in San Paolo Albanese (Pollino National Park) The interplay between gross primary productivity and plant growth under the impact of summer drought events is mediated by the tree carbon reserves. To investigate how pl...

Mediterranean pine plantations provide several ecosystem services but are particularly sensitive to climate change. Forest management practices might play a strategic role in the long-term adaptation of Mediterranean forests, but the joint effect of climate change and alternative management options in the near and far future have seldom been invest...

Tropospheric ozone (O3) is one of the most concernedair pollutants dueto its widespread impacts on land vegetated ecosystems and human health. Ozone is also the third greenhouse gas for radiative forcing. Consequently, it should be carefully and continuously monitored to estimate its potential adverse impacts especially inthose regions where concen...

Surface ozone (O3) is a threat to forests by decreasing photosynthesis and, consequently, influencing the strength of land carbon sink. However, due to the lack of continuous surface O3 measurements, -p observational-based assessments of O3 impacts on forests are largely missing at hemispheric to global scales. Currently, some metrics are used for...

Ecological research heavily relies on coarse-­gridded climate data based on standardized temperature measurements recorded at 2 m height in open landscapes. However, many organisms experience environmental conditions that differ substantially from those captured by these macroclimatic (i.e. free air) temperature grids. In forests, the tree canopy f...

Climate change is affecting natural ecosystems and society. Anticipating its impacts on vegetation resilience is critical to estimate the ecosystems’ response to global changes and the reliability of the related ecosystem services, to support mitigation actions, and to define proper adaptation plans. Here, we compute the Annual Production Resil...

This study aimed to simulate oak and beech forest growth under various scenarios of climate change and to evaluate how the forest response depends on site properties and particularly on stand characteristics using the individual process-based model HETEROFOR. First, this model was evaluated on a wide range of site conditions. We used data from 36 l...

Terrestrial ecosystems and forests in particular, are important components because of their key role in reducing atmospheric greenhouse gas concentrations by storing a large amount of carbon in biomass and soils. Increasing attention is being paid to forestland area, which accounts for 30% of the total land surface and acts as the main C store in t...

Extreme weather events are increasing in frequency and intensity due to global climate change. We hypothesized that tree carbon reserves are crucial for resilience of beech, buffering the source-sink imbalance due to late frosts and summer droughts, and that different components of non-structural carbohydrates (NSCs) play specific roles in coping w...

1. Understanding the processes that shape forest functioning, structure, and diversity remains challenging, although data on forest systems are being collected at a rapid pace and across scales. Forest models have a long history in bridging data with ecological knowledge and can simulate forest dynamics over spatio-temporal scales unreachable by mo...

p>The following authors were omitted from the original version of this Data Descriptor: Markus Reichstein and Nicolas Vuichard. Both contributed to the code development and N. Vuichard contributed to the processing of the ERA-Interim data downscaling. Furthermore, the contribution of the co-author Frank Tiedemann was re-evaluated relative to the co...

Terrestrial ecosystems, and forests in particular, are important components of land processes because of their key role in reducing atmospheric greenhouse gas concentrations by storing a large amount of carbon in tree biomass and soils. Increasing attention is being paid to forestland area, which accounts for 30% of the total land surface and acts...

In recent decades, droughts, deforestation and wildfires have become recurring phenomena that have heavily affected both human activities and natural ecosystems in Amazonia. The time needed for an ecosystem to recover from carbon losses is a crucial metric to evaluate disturbance impacts on forests. However, little is known about the impacts of the...

The present dataset belongs the paper: Collalti A., Ibrom A., Stockmarr A., Cescatti A., Alkama R., Fernández-Martínez M., Matteucci G., Sitch S., Friedlingstein P., Ciais P., Goll D.S., Nabel J.E.M.S., Pongratz J., Arneth A., Haverd V., Prentice I.C.. “Forest production efficiency increases with growth temperature", Nature Communications, 11, 5322...

Extreme weather events are increasing in frequency and intensity due to global climate change. We hypothesized that thesehave a strong impact on the stem radial growth and the dynamic of non-structural carbohydrates (NSCs). In order to assessthe effects on mature trees of a late frost occurred in spring 2016 and a drought event characterizing the s...

Extreme weather events are increasing in frequency and intensity due to global climate change. We hypothesized that these have a strong impact on the stem radial growth and the dynamic of non-structural carbohydrates (NSCs). In order to assess the effects on mature trees of a late frost occurred in spring 2016 and a drought event characterizing the...

Shallow landslides are an increasing concern in Italy and worldwide because of the frequent association with vegetation management. As vegetation cover plays a fundamental role in slope stability, we developed a GIS-based model to evaluate the influence of plant roots on slope safety, and also included a landslide susceptibility map. The GIS-based...