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Turkey

Forestry and Peatlands

Vulnerabilities - Overview

The increased vulnerability of forests (and people) with respect to climate change refers to several impacts (4,10):


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Vulnerabilities

Among all European regions, the Mediterranean appears most vulnerable to global change. Multiple potential impacts are related primarily to increased temperatures and reduced precipitation. The impacts included water shortages, increased risk of forest fires, northward shifts in the distribution of typical tree species, and losses of agricultural potential. Mountain regions also seemed vulnerable because of a rise in the elevation of snow cover and altered river runoff regimes (1).

Vulnerabilities – Subtropical dry forests in Europe

Subtropical dry forests occur in parts of Europe with at least eight months of over 10°C: parts of Spain, Italy, Greece, and Turkey. These regions have hot dry summers and humid mild winters, with annual rainfall in the 400–900 mm range (2).

Subtropical species are partly already well adapted to warm and dry climates. However, many subtropical species now exist in highly fragmented environments as islands of natural forest amongst oceans of agricultural land. Species at a particular location may not have access to new sites where they would be better adapted to the new climatic conditions. Less tolerant species may then decrease in abundance and hereby create for other, more tolerant resident species opportunities to become more abundant because of reduced competition (2).

Benefits

Globally, based on both satellite and ground-based data, climatic changes seemed to have a generally positive impact on forest productivity since the middle of the 20th century, when water was not limiting (11).

Timber production in Europe

Climate change will probably increase timber production and reduce prices for wood products in Europe. For 2000–2050 a change of timber production in Europe is expected of -4 to +5%. For 2050–2100 an increase is expected of +2 to +13% (3).

Adaptation strategies - Forest management measures in general

Measures such as the establishment of migration corridors, connecting nature reserves, may assist the predicted poleward migration of tree species. Also, forest management should focus on reducing stress from external sources, such as extreme events and disturbances. Some additional management options reported for promoting adaptation are: high-quality genetic selection or selection of trees from specific varieties/origins; promotion of mixed-species forests; decrease of the area of monocultures; reducing the threats of pests and diseases; afforestation; fire prevention (8).

Adaptive management

The terms adaptation and adaptive management are often incorrectly used interchangeably. The former involves making adjustments in response to or in anticipation of climate change whereas the latter describes a management system that may be considered, in itself, to be an adaptation tactic (5). Adaptive management is a systematic process for continually improving management policies and practices by learning from the outcomes of operational programmes (6). It involves recognizing uncertainty and establishing methodologies to test hypotheses concerning those uncertainties; it uses management as a tool not only to change the system but to learn about the system (7).


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References

The references below are cited in full in a separate map 'References'. Please click here if you are looking for the full references for Turkey.

  1. Schröter et al. (2005)
  2. Fischlin (ed.) (2009)
  3. Karjalainen et al. (2003); Nabuurs et al. (2002); Perez-Garcia et al. (2002); Sohngen et al. (2001), in: Osman-Elasha and Parrotta (2009)
  4. Innes (ed.) (2009)
  5. Ogden and Innes (2007), in: Innes (ed.) (2009)
  6. BCMOF (2006a), in: Innes (ed.) (2009)
  7. Holling (1978); Lee (1993, 2001), all in: Innes (ed.) (2009)
  8. Roberts (ed.) (2009)
  9. Keskitalo (2008), in: Roberts (ed.) (2009)
  10. Kirilenko and Sedjo (2007)
  11. Boisvenue et al. (2006)

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