Climate change will increase forest disturbances in Europe throughout the 21st century
Summary
Wildfires, insect outbreaks, and storms cause large pulses of tree mortality. Climate change amplifies these forest disturbances, yet their future magnitude and extent remain uncertain. Here, we simulated future forest disturbance regimes at 100-meter resolution across Europe using a deep learning-based simulation framework. Our results show that forest disturbances will continue to increase throughout the 21st century, with disturbed areas more than doubling relative to the recent past un
Content
# Climate change will increase forest disturbances in Europe throughout the 21st century
*Published: 2026 Mar 5*
Wildfires, insect outbreaks, and storms cause large pulses of tree mortality.
Climate change amplifies these forest disturbances, yet their future magnitude
and extent remain uncertain. Here, we simulated future forest disturbance
regimes at 100-meter resolution across Europe using a deep learning-based
simulation framework. Our results show that forest disturbances will continue to
increase throughout the 21st century, with disturbed areas more than doubling
relative to the recent past under an unabated continuation of climate change.
Wildfires are the main agent driving future disturbance change. Changing
disturbances result in an increase in young forests, substantially altering
Europe's forest demography. Because of their profound implications for forest
carbon storage and the habitat value of forest ecosystems, disturbances should
be a priority of forest policy and management.
DOI: 10.1126/science.adx6329