Objective
Evaluate climate change scenarios on forest environmental services
1) Drag the Icon on the map to the location of interest
2) Check the productivity calculated
3) Click on 
to decrease/increase temperature and check the changes
in future productivity
Forest Environmental Services
- Carbon Sequestration (Productivity)
- Soil Erosion (not active, under development)
- Biodiversity (not active, under development)
- Water (not active, under development)
- Nitrogen (not active, under development)
Datasets used
- Productivity of forest (Mean Annual Increment) is used for accessing Carbon Sequestration rates. The model used is still under development and is able to capture approximately 50% of the variability (r2=0.5).
- Soil Erosion map is used to detect if forest will have a high or low impact on soils erosion. Forests are more effective on high erosion risk areas
- Biodiversity index is explored. Forests will have more positive impact where low biodiversity exists
- Water content of soil. Due to evapotranspiration, forests will have a negative impact on areas with low water content and positive effect on potentially flooded areas
- Nitrogen. Deep roots of trees enable a larger root uptake zone, particularly important to recover nitrogen in the soil, reducing the risk of leaching and consequent pollution of lakes
Climate Change effects
How will the Forest Environmental Services change under climate change?
- The spatial productivity distribution will change with climate change due to spatial shifts in water and temperature.
- Soil Erosion map is used to detect if forest will have a high or low impact on soils erosion. Forests are more effective on high erosion risk areas
- Biodiversity index is explored. Forests will have more positive impact where low biodiversity exists
- Water content of soil. Due to evapotranspiration, forests will have a negative impact on areas with low water content and positive effect on potentially flooded areas
- Nitrogen. Deep roots of trees enable a larger root uptake zone, particularly important to recover nitrogen in the soil, reducing the risk of leaching and consequent pollution of lakes
The info tab will deliver these comparisons under the current and changed climate
WEFES - Web Explorer for Forest Environmental Services under Climate Change
The European Union TRANZFOR project
enabled the collaboration between the Instituto Superior de Agronomia (Technical University of Lisbon), (Portugal)
and SCION, Rotorua, New Zealand.
A couple of months of interchange based in Rotorua enabled to develop WEFES, an interface prototype to explore environmental services provided by forests under current and future climate.
In the interface background, models are run. As a demonstration, only carbon is enabled as a forest service, represented by the Mean Annual Increment 300 index (MAI300) which works as productivity indicator over New Zealand. Future developments will include other environmental services as soil erosion, biodiversity, water impact, nitrogen leaching, and others, depending on the availability of the models.
Mentor scientists of this interface:
Tim Payne (Scion)
Joćo Palma (ISA/UTL)
Interface development:
Joao Palma
Acknowledgements:
The support for this interchange is gratefully aknowledged to:
