Data from: Increasing forest disturbances in Europe and their impact on carbon storage

Disturbances from wind, bark beetles and wildfires have increased in
Europe’s forests throughout the twentieth century. Climatic changes were
identified as a key driver behind this increase, yet how the expected
continuation of climate change will affect Europe’s forest disturbance
regime remains unresolved. Increasing disturbances could strongly impact
the forest carbon budget, and are suggested to contribute to the recently
observed carbon sink saturation in Europe’s forests. Here we show that
forest disturbance damage in Europe has continued to increase in the first
decade of the twenty-first century. On the basis of an ensemble of climate
change scenarios we find that damage from wind, bark beetles and forest
fires is likely to increase further in coming decades, and estimate the
rate of increase to be +0.91 × 106 m3 of timber per year until 2030. We
show that this intensification can offset the effect of management
strategies aiming to increase the forest carbon sink, and calculate the
disturbance-related reduction of the carbon storage potential in Europe’s
forests to be 503.4 Tg C in 2021–2030. Our results highlight the
considerable carbon cycle feedbacks of changing disturbance regimes, and
underline that future forest policy and management will require a stronger
focus on disturbance risk and resilience.