Climate change is projected to have negative implications for forest ecosystems and their dependent communities and industries. Adaptation studies of forestry practices have focused on maintaining the provisioning of ecosystem services; however, those practices may have implications for climate change mitigation as well by increasing biological sinks or reducing emissions. Assessments of the effectiveness of adaptation strategies to mitigate climate change are therefore needed; however, they have not been done for the world's northern coniferous forests. Diversifying the forest by planting tree species more likely suited to a future climate is a potential adaptation strategy to increase resilience. The efficacy of this strategy to reduce the risks of climate change is uncertain, and other ecosystem services provided by the forest are also likely to be affected. We used a spatially explicit forest landscape modeling framework (LANDIS‐II) to simulate the effects of planting a range of native tree species in colder areas than where they are currently planted in a managed temperate coniferous forest landscape in British Columbia, Canada. We investigated impacts on carbon pools, fluxes, tree species diversity, and harvest levels under different climate scenarios for 100 yr (2015–2115) and found that the capacity of our forest landscape to sequester carbon would largely depend on the precipitation rates in the future, rather than on temperature. We further found that, irrespective of the climate prediction model, current planting standards led to relatively low levels of resilience as indicated by carbon fluxes and stocks, net primary productivity (NPP), and species diversity. In contrast, planting a mix of alternative tree species was generally superior in increasing the resilience indicators: carbon stocks and fluxes,NPP, and tree species diversity, but not harvest rates. The second best novel planting regime involved addingPinus contortato the stocking standard in three ecoregions; however, that species is susceptible to a high number of insects and pathogens. We conclude that although the capacity of temperate coniferous forest landscapes to sequester carbon in the future is largely dependent on the precipitation regime, negative effects may be counteracted to some extent by increasing resilience through tree species diversity in forests.

Management of temperate forests has the potential to increase carbon sinks and mitigate climate change. However, those opportunities may be confounded by negative climate change impacts. We therefore need a better understanding of climate change alterations to temperate forest carbon dynamics before developing mitigation strategies. The purpose of this project was to investigate the interactions of species composition, fire, management, and climate change in the Copper–Pine Creek valley, a temperate coniferous forest with a wide range of growing conditions. To do so, we used the LANDIS-II modelling framework including the new Forest Carbon Succession extension to simulate forest ecosystems under four different productivity scenarios, with and without climate change effects, until 2050. Significantly, the new extension allowed us to calculate the net sector productivity, a carbon accounting metric that integrates aboveground and belowground carbon dynamics, disturbances, and the eventual fate of forest products. The model output was validated against literature values. The results implied that the species optimum growing conditions relative to current and future conditions strongly influenced future carbon dynamics. Warmer growing conditions led to increased carbon sinks and storage in the colder and wetter ecoregions but not necessarily in the others. Climate change impacts varied among species and site conditions, and this indicates that both of these components need to be taken into account when considering climate change mitigation activities and adaptive management. The introduction of a new carbon indicator, net sector productivity, promises to be useful in assessing management effectiveness and mitigation activities.

The default international accounting rules estimate the carbon emissions from forest products by assuming all harvest is immediately emitted to the atmosphere. This makes it difficult to assess the greenhouse gas (GHG) consequences of different forest management or manufacturing activities that maintain the storage of carbon. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) addresses this issue by allowing other accounting methods. The objective of this paper is to provide a new model for estimating annual stock changes of carbon in harvested wood products (HWP).

The forest sector can help reduce atmospheric CO₂ through carbon (C) sequestration and storage and wood substitution of more polluting materials. However, climate change can have an impact on the C fluxes we are trying to leverage through forestry. We calculated the difference in CO₂ eq. fluxes between ecosystem-based forest management and total forest conservation in the context of the temperate-boreal forest ecotone of Quebec (Canada), taking into account fluxes from forest ecosystems, wood product life cycle, and the substitution effect of wood products on markets. Over the 2020–2120 period, in the absence of climate change, ecosystem-based forest management and wood production caused average net annual emissions of 66.9 kilotonnes (kt) of CO₂ eq. year⁻¹ (relative to forest conservation), and 15.4 kt of CO₂ eq. year⁻¹ when assuming a 100% substitution effect of wood products. While management increased the ecosystem C sink, emissions from degradation of largely short-lived wood products caused the system to be a net source. Moreover, climate warming would decrease the capacity of ecosystems to sequester C and cause a shift towards more hardwood species. Our study highlights the need to adapt the industrial network towards an increased capacity of processing hardwoods into long-lived products and/or products with high substitution potential.

Most wildfire studies are regional to global in scale; however, many of the values of interest and the weather are local phenomena that may give rise to large spatial variability in risk. We assessed the interaction of elevation and climate on fire weather for the Penticton Creek watershed in southwestern Canada for historic weather, and five climate change scenarios. Daily temperature and precipitation records spanning 100 years were generated using the LARS-WG5 weather generator and were used to calculate the fire weather indices of the Canadian Forest Fire Danger Rating System. Fire season length, restricted activity season, and fire season severity are all projected to increase by the 2050s and in some scenarios to increase further by the 2080s. Low and mid-elevations had substantially worsening risks, whereas at the highest elevations, risks were mitigated by the continuation of the snowpack. Increasing temperatures lengthened the fire season while decreasing (increasing) precipitation exacerbated (ameliorated) the intensity of the fire risk. These results indicate more variable climate change effects than in the literature. Over 24 million km² globally of forestland have a similar or higher degree of slope, highlighting the need for detailed topographic integration in fire studies to meet the needs of local planners.