Dynamic Modelling of Silvopastoral Landscape Structure: Scenarios for Future Climate and Land Use

Abstract: Pasture-woodland landscapes result from a long history of silvopastoralism in mountain regions and provide valuable ecosystem services. They include a mosaic of grasslands, forests and wood-pastures, which is the heritage of a multipurpose management in the variable socio-economic and biophysical context of the last millennium. In the perspective of ongoing climate and land-use changes, it is crucial to assess the resilience and the adaptive capacity of such socio-ecological systems at different spatial and temporal scales. For this purpose, we developed a hierarchical, process-based, dynamic model, WoodPaM, and we simulated six scenarios of climate change and management in a real landscape of the Swiss Jura Mountains. Realistic climatic scenarios for the next century are likely to provoke critical changes in vegetation structure and composition, leading to a breakdown of resilience. This is due to the predicted fast decline of present dominant tree species, which will be slowly replaced by more adapted species. Assisted migration could reduce the risk of temporary forest breakdown, as suggested by simulations with enhanced immigration rate during the warming period. Logging could lead to landscape simplification or introduce shifting mosaic cycles depending on warming intensity. Active adaptive management involving modellers and stakeholders is a promising strategy to face such future changes