Forests provide several ecosystem services essential for human well-being. However, with ongoing climate change the frequency and intensity of climatic stressors and natural disturbances are increasing, making forests less resilient. Hence, knowledge about forest resilience is essential to understand ecosystem dynamics and adaptation capacity, especially in mountains of the Mediterranean region, which is considered a climate change hotspot. In the last years, resilience components (i.e., the indices of resistance, resilience, and recovery) have been recognized as advantageous indices to assess growth responses to climatic stressors and disturbances to promote climate-smart forestry strategies.
This contribution explores the use of resilience components to: (i) assess the impact of drought in different pine provenances in Mediterranean forest provenance trials (Sardinia, Italy); and (ii) evaluate the radial growth responses to late frost and drought in mixed oak-fir forests in Mediterranean mountains (Apennine, Italy).
Results confirm that resilience components play a crucial role to discriminate growth response to climatic stressors supporting forest managers to implement climate-smart forestry strategies. Furthermore, resilience components can be considered as indicators of climate-smart forestry providing significant insights to the European observatory part of the FORWARDS project, that is a long-term tool for monitoring climate change impacts and support related decision-making processes.