Marc Grünig, Werner Rammer, Cornelius Senf, Katharina Albrich, Frédéric André, Andrey L. D. Augustynczik, M. Baumann, Friedrich J. Bohn, M. Bouwman, Harald Bugmann, Alessio Collalti, Irina Cristal, Daniela Dalmonech, Francois De Coligny, Laura Dobor, Christina Dollinger, Josep María Espelta, David I. Forrester, Jordi Garcia-Gonzalo, José Ramón González-Olabarria, Ulrike Hiltner, Tomáš Hlásny, Juha Honkaniemi, Nica Huber, Mathieu Jonard, Anna Maria Jönsson, Georges Kunstler, Fredrik Lagergren, Marcus Lindner, Marco Mina, Christine Moos, Xavier Morin, Bart Muys, Gert Jan Nabuurs, Mats Nieberg, Marco Patacca, Mikko Peltoniemi, Christopher P. O. Reyer, Mart-Jan Schelhaas, Ilié Storms, Dominik Thom, Maude Toigo, Rupert Seidl
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.