Rasoul Yousefpour

University of Freiburg | Albert-Ludwigs-Universität Freiburg · Faculty of Environment and Natural Resources

Context We develop a modelling concept that updates knowledge and beliefs about future climate changes, to model a decision-maker’s choice of forest management alternatives, the outcomes of which depend on the climate condition. Aims Applying Bayes’ updating, we show that while the true climate trajectory is initially unknown, it will eventually be...

We study climate uncertainty and how managers’ beliefs about climate change develop and influence their decisions. We develop an approach for updating knowledge and beliefs based on the observation of forest and climate variables and illustrate its application for the adaptive management of an even-aged Norway spruce (Picea abies L. Karst) forest i...

The paper applies a non-linear optimization approach to evaluate biodiversity in the multi-purpose modelling of forest management. An even-aged forest of pure Norway spruce was generated from large-scale inventory data of the Black Forest of southwest Germany. The effects of different management alternatives including five conversion schemes, two t...

• Context This review paper provides an overview of approaches to which we may resort for handling the complex decision problems involving uncertainty and risk that climate change implies for forest managers. Modelling approaches that could support adaptive management strategies seem to be called for, not only as climate change denotes increased ec...

The paper presents a combined simulation–optimization approach to model forest conversion planning taking the values of timber, carbon and biodiversity into account. The development of a virtual age-class forest was predicted by adopting a single tree forest growth tool, “TreeGrOSS”. The effects of different conversion regimes with continuous varia...

Tropical reforestation is among the most powerful tools for carbon sequestration. Yet, climate change impacts on productivity are often not accounted for when estimating its mitigation potential. Using the process-based forest growth model 3-PGmix, we analyzed future productivity of tropical reforestation in Central America. Around 29°C mean annual...

Central America hosts many key biodiversity areas (KBAs), areas which represent unique and irreplaceable ecosystems of global importance for species conservation. However, large extents of these areas are not under legal protection and could be threatened by pressures from land use change (e.g., deforestation and agricultural expansion), high human...

Reforestation of tropical forests is crucial to mitigate the climate crisis and restore ecosystems. However, past efforts have been criticized for establishing monoculture timber plantations with exotic tree species. Close-to-Nature (CTN) practices aim to minimize negative forest management impacts on forest ecosystems by mimicking natural dynamics...

This article aims to compare different forest adaptation strategies based on stand diversification from an economic perspective in order to reduce extreme drought-and windstorm-induced risks of dieback. We tested the efficiency of the strategies individually and then combined through a simulation study in which we evaluated the financial loss and t...

Tropical reforestation is an important strategy to mitigate the global climate crisis through the sequestration of CO2. Together with increasing CO2 prices, carbon storage becomes increasingly relevant for commercial re-forestations. Due to higher productivity, mixed-species reforestations have been suggested for carbon plantings. Yet, current stud...

Soil organic carbon (SOC) storage plays a crucial role in mitigating global climate change while maintaining forests and sustaining environmental conditions. Recent studies have shown that plant species diversity increases SOC storage in experimental grasslands and natural forests. Here, we aim to show how an integrating tree-size and trait-based e...

Key message By calibrating and validating a forest growth model for seven species in Germany and coupling it with a wind damage simulator, we specifically estimated the impact of wind damage on the net present value of Norway spruce and European beech in mixture and monoculture. Under risk, the net present value of spruce managements saw the sharpe...

Tropical forests represent important supporting pillars for society, supplying global ecosystem services (ES), e.g., as carbon sinks for climate regulation and as crucial habitats for unique biodiversity. However, climate change impacts including implications for the economic value of these services have been rarely explored before. Here, we derive...

Robust decision-making in forestry seeks solutions that reduce the risk of environmental damage and economic losses, which matters for designing forest adaptation measures. We propose a state-of-the-art methodology to identify robust drought adaptive strategies. First, we used a process-based model with an ensemble of climate change scenarios to si...

Understanding niche and its parameters including niche breadth and niche overlap hold promise in discerning the needs, tolerances of organisms and also the extent of niche overlap among the sympatric species. Such information is critical to the conservation and management of important forest tree species. In view of the lack of any detailed previou...

Key message Managing forest risks in uncertain times of climate change necessitates novel and adaptive forest decision approaches. Multiple risks (biotic and abiotic) and sources of uncertainty should be identified, and their quantities over decision horizon should be propagated in searching for robust solutions. The solutions may ask for changes i...

Large-scale reforestations in the tropics have become an important strategy to mitigate the global climate crisis through the sequestration of CO2. Mixed-species reforestations have been suggested for carbon plantings. In the context of commercial plantation forestry, the establishment of mixed-species plantations should be addressed under the cons...

Tropical forest plantations play an important role in meeting global wood demand. While research has highlighted the ecological potential of mixed-species plantations, studies on the economic viability and management of such plantations are largely missing in the context of tropical plantation forestry. In this study, we estimated the economic pote...

Native tree species and species mixtures are key elements for biodiversity conservation by forest plantations. Yet, introduced species planted in monoculture still dominate plantation forests in many regions around the world and especially in the tropics. In Costa Rica and Panamá, Tectona grandis (teak) is the most planted species, occupying 49% an...

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...

Forests cover approximately one-third of Germany’s territory. They are among the most productive forests in Europe and in a position to contribute considerably to climate change mitigation. Germany has set national targets for climate mitigation via forests and measures such as conversion towards mixed and climate-adapted forests; a stronger contro...

Riparian zones are the paragon of transitional ecosystems, providing critical habitat and ecosystem services that are especially threatened by global change. Following consultation with experts, 10 key challenges were identified to be addressed for riparian vegetation science and management improvement: (1) Create a distinct scientific community by...

Forest thinning can significantly affect hydrological processes. However, these effects largely vary with forest types, climate, thinning intensity, and hydrological variables of interest. Understanding these effects and their variations can significantly support thinning treatments' design and selection to ensure desired hydrological benefits. In...

Forests are the major components of global carbon (C) cycling, and hence, it is crucial to explore the drivers of forest functions related to C sequestration. Here, using the multiple linear regressions models (MLMs) and structural equation models (SEMs), we evaluated how abiotic (i.e., soil nutrients and topography) and biotic [i.e., functional tr...

The magnitude and duration of ongoing global warming affects tree growth, especially in semi-arid forest landscapes, which are typically dominated by a few adapted tree species. We investigated the effect of climatic control on the tree growth of Persian oak (Quercus brantii Lindl.), which is a dominant species in the Central Zagros Mountains of we...

Climate change is producing threats to forests’ capacity of regulating water regimes. Therefore, thinning strategies can be applied to mitigate climate change impacts more efficiently by providing more spaces for trees to utilize resources e.g., water and nutrients. This study examined the effects of different thinning intensities and intervals on...

The evaluation of the cost-effectiveness of Payments for ecosystem services (PES) in fostering positive environmental outcomes has been central to the scientific debate on their implementation. PES cost-effectiveness can be affected by a myriad of environmental, institutional and socio-economic factors operating at different spatial and temporal sc...

Conservation programmes of recent decades aimed to adopt an approach that addresses biodiversity conservation goals through socio-economic tools and to better integrate the human dimension into biodiversity conservation. Yet, to analyse this complex conservation-development nexus, studying conservation perceptions of local populations are crucial t...

Climate smart forestry (CSF) integrates ecological, economic and social dimensions in forest decision process under climate change. CSF aims to develop adaptive response to global change and optimally contribute to mitigation goals. CSF projects are ecologically effective and economically efficient in reaching the goals and involve society in the p...

Forests play a key role in a bio-based economy by providing renewable materials, mitigating climate change, and accommodating biodiversity. However, forests experience massive increases in stresses in their ecological and socioeconomic environments, threatening forest ecosystem services supply. Alleviating those stresses is hampered by conflicting...

Forest growth function and water cycle are affected by climatic conditions, making climate-sensitive models, e.g., process-based, crucial to the simulation of dynamics of forest and water interactions. A rewarded and widely applied model for forest growth analysis and management, 3PG, is a physiological process-based forest stand model that predict...

Key message We applied a modified forest gap model (ForClim) to depict changes in stand water transpiration via density reduction as a forest adaptation strategy. This approach is the key to analyzing the ecological resilience to drought, stress-induced mortality, and economic efficiency of managed mixed forest stands in Central Europe. The results...

Human induced land use changes affect the provisioning of ecosystem services and may follow some economic rationale. Allocation of limited natural resources to different land utilization forms is the ultimate management problem for sustainable development. This study attempts to analyses the current land-use allocation systems in the Zagros area of...

The tropical forests of Central America serve a pivotal role as biodiversity hotspots and provide ecosystem services securing human livelihood. However, climate change is expected to affect the species composition of forest ecosystems, lead to forest type transitions and trigger irrecoverable losses of habitat and biodiversity. Here, we investigate...

It is generally well-explored that overstorey stratum regulates understorey stratum through the dominant role over the available resources in forests. However, the relationships amongst topography, soil nutrients, species diversity, tree-size dimension inequality and aboveground carbon (AGC) stock across forest strata remain debated in forest ecosy...

Current policy pledges promote the expansion of conservation areas and mixed forests with endemic species. Climate change, however, may undermine these efforts and modify the relationships and benefits related to the ecosystem services provided by forest ecosystems. Hence, managers must account for climate impacts on future forest dynamics, based o...

Extreme droughts are expected to increase in frequency and severity in many regions of the world, threatening multiple ecosystem services provided by forests. Effective strategies to adapt forests to such droughts require comprehensive information on the effects and importance of the factors influencing forest resistance and resilience. We used a u...

Forest disturbances significantly affect the global carbon cycle by, for example, vegetation loss or changing forest phenology. However, the lack of historical disturbance events constitutes a challenge for in-depth temporal and spatial analysis. Available remote sensing time series and combined climate data may have great potential to quickly and...

Native tree species and species mixtures are key elements for biodiversity conservation by forest plantations. Yet, introduced species planted in monoculture still dominate plantation forests in many regions around the world and especially in the tropics. In Costa Rica and Panam´a, Tectona grandis (teak) is the most planted species, occupying 49% a...

Global warming poses great challenges for forest managers regarding adaptation strategies and species choices. More frequent drought events and heat spells are expected to reduce growth and increase mortality. Extended growing seasons, warming and elevated CO2 (eCO2) can also positively affect forest productivity. We studied the growth, productivit...

With global warming, the growing season is expected to increase for many regions of the Northern Hemisphere. It is therefore important to represent this mechanism in process-based forest growth models used in climate change impact analysis. 3-PG (Physiological Principles Predicting Growth) is a widely used process-based model that operates on stand...

The decision on how to manage a forest under climate change is subject to deep and dynamic uncertainties. The classic approach to analyze this decision adopts a predefined strategy, tests its robustness to uncertainties, but neglects their dynamic nature (i.e., that decision-makers can learn and adjust the strategy). Accounting for learning through...

Forestry professionals’ attitudes towards risk and uncertainty under climate change, together with their perception about suitability of adaptation strategies, were investigated in Central Europe. We applied an original methodology based on lottery choices to quantify their risk and uncertainty attitude, combined with a questionnaire study about th...

Forests are prone to direct and indirect effects of climate change. Adaptation strategies have been developed to increase the resistance of forests towards climate change and to reduce the associated risks. However, the direction and degree of climate change remain deeply uncertain. This deep uncertainty is often neglected in forest management. Thu...

The anticipated climate change during the next decades is posing crucial challenges to ecosystems. In order to decrease the vulnerability of forests, introducing tree species' mixtures are a viable strategy, with deep-rooting native Silver fir (Abies alba) being a primary candidate for admixture into current pure stands of European beech (Fagus syl...

Schedules of declining discount rates have been advocated, and adopted by several European governments. They undermine classical solutions to forest economics problems, especially optimal rotation. Adapting classical first-order conditions created problems of local optimisation. A global search algorithm allowed inclusion of initial costs and thinn...

Forest management and disturbances are among the main drivers of changes in forest dynamics in temperate ecosystems. To promote and maintain forest multifunctionality and species persistence in the landscape, it is critical that the interactions between these factors and forest biodiversity are disentangled. Still, the relationships between disturb...

Central American forests are global hotspots of biodiversity and contribute to human livelihood through the provision of services like carbon sequestration, timber production and scenic beauty for ecotourism. While a considerable ecological and economic value is bound to these ecosystems, few studies so far have investigated climate change impacts...

Forest management affects carbon sequestration (mitigation) and resilience of forest ecosystems (adaptation) under climate change. Therefore, the efforts to integrate these two approaches have been made by the political arrangements to seek the synergy effects and deal with trade-offs. To study the state of the art linkages and forest policies to r...

Selecting a variant of forest regeneration cuttings that would ensure fulfilling multiple, frequently conflicting forest functions is a challenging task for forest management planning. The aim of this work is to present an efficient and complex analysis of the impact of different forest management scenarios on stand wind stability, timber productio...

Retention forestry, which retains a portion of the original stand at the time of harvesting to maintain continuity of structural and compositional diversity, has been originally developed to mitigate the impacts of clear‐cutting. Retention of habitat trees and deadwood has since become common practice also in continuous‐cover forests of Central Eur...

Retention forestry implies that biological legacies like dead and living trees are deliberately selected and retained beyond harvesting cycles to benefit biodiversity and ecosystem functioning. This model has been applied for several decades in even-aged, clearcutting (CC) systems but less so in uneven-aged, continuous-cover forestry (CCF). We prov...

Climate change is expected to cause major changes in forest ecosystems during the 21 st century and beyond. To assess forest impacts from climate change, the existing empirical information must be structured, harmonised and assimilated into a form suitable to develop and test state-of-the-art forest and ecosystem models. The combination of empirica...

Carbon allocation plays a key role in ecosystem dynamics and plant adaptation to changing environmental conditions. Hence, proper description of this process in vegetation models is crucial for the simulations of the impact of climate change on carbon cycling in forests. Here we review how carbon allocation modelling is currently implemented in 31...

Forest biodiversity underpins social welfare by preserving ecosystem multifunctionality and the provision of ecosystem goods and services. Still, the social value of biodiversity is not adequately incorporated into forest management and decision support models. This study proposes a novel approach for defining socially optimal biodiversity levels,...

Forest biodiversity underpins ecosystem functioning and the provision of multiple ecosystem goods and services that are essential to human well-being. Still, the social value of biodiversity is rarely taken into account in the management of forest resources. Forest biodiversity is a public good and, as such, it complicates the process of internaliz...

Background. Uncertainty about climate change impacts on forests can hinder mitigation and adaptation actions. Scientific enquiry typically involves assessments of uncertainties, yet different uncertainty components emerge in different studies. Consequently, inconsistent understanding of uncertainty among different climate impact studies (from the i...

Uncertainty about climate change impacts on forests can hinder mitigation and adaptation actions. Scientific enquiry typically involves assessments of uncertainties, yet different uncertainty components emerge in different studies. Consequently, inconsistent understanding of uncertainty among different climate impact studies (from the impact analys...

Predicting future forest growth and yield is a key element of sustainable forest management. Hyrcanian forests are the most valuable forests in the north of Iran, and industrial harvesting occurs only in this area of the country. While uneven-aged Hyrcanian forests are one of the most important vegetated areas, and the only commercial forests in Ir...

The aim of this study is to determine the optimum stock level in the forest. In this research, a goal programming method was used to estimate the optimal stock level of different tree species considering environmental, economic and social issues. We consider multiple objectives in the process of decision-making to maximize carbon sequestration, net...

Forest growth predictions are used to build expectations about the future economic performance of management decisions. Faustmann land expectation value (LEV) is a widely used criterion in forestry to evaluate a diversity of decision parameters, such as rotation age and thinning regimes. Most of the predictions and, consequently, expectations are b...

The provision of forest biodiversity remains a major challenge in the management of forest resources. Biodiversity is mostly considered a public good and the fact that societal benefits from biodiversity are private information, hinders its supply at adequate levels. Here we investigate how the government, as a forest owner, may increase the biodiv...