Format: ORAL

Miriam Bravo-Hernndez*, Julen Astigarraga, Susanne Suvanto, Albert Vil-Cabrera, Thomas A.M. Pugh,4, Miguel A. Zavala, Adriane Esquivel-Muelbert3, Andr Thibaut5, Andrzej Talarczyk6, Anja Leyman7, Emil Cienciala8, Georges Kunstler9, Jonas Fridman10, Julien Barrere9, Leen Govaere7, Marta Rodrguez-Rey1, Mart-Jan Schelhaas11, Sara Villn-Prez1, Paloma Ruiz-Benito

1 Universidad de Alcalá, Madrid, Spain 2 Natural Resources Institute Finland (Luke), Helsinki, Finland 3 University of Birminghan, Birmingham, UK 4 Lund University, Lund, Sweden 5 Service Public de Wallonie, Jambes, Belgium 6 Forest and Natural Resources Research Centre Foundation, Warsaw, Poland 7 Agency for Nature and Forests (ANB), Brussels, Belgium 8 IFER - Institute of Forest Ecosystem Research, Jilove u Prahy, Czech Republic 9 Université Grenoble Alpes (INRAE), UR LESSEM, Saint-Martin-d`Hères, France 10 Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences, Umeå, Sweden 11 Wageningen Environmental Research (WENR), Wageningen, Netherlands

Forest ecosystems play a crucial role in climate change mitigation due to their extensive carbon sequestration and reservoir capacity. Tree species distributions and abundance largely vary across environmental gradients and are expected to change in response to climate change and management. The expected spatio-temporal changes of coexisting species depend on different demographic processes, where tree growth and mortality may follow the same or opposite directions, largely contingent on species strategies to cope with climate change. However, changes in species demographic processes across large environmental gradients remain unexplored. In this study, we aim to investigate changes in species abundance and forest composition considering biomass gains and losses for the main tree species in Europe. We used National Forest Inventories (NFIs) to build species-specific models of biomass gains and losses, considering climate, forest structure, and recent management. Then, we integrated these models predictions to determine changes in composition and carbon storage under climate change scenarios. We observed that biomass gains and losses generally follow similar patterns, with a high importance of forest structure, climate and recent management driving observed changes. The predicted changes in species and functional composition across Europe under climate change varied across the covered environmental gradient, which is directly linked with the predicted carbon stored. Future work should further explore the potential implications of increased biomass gains and losses under climate change and the potential role of forest management in modifying these trends.