A Preliminary Assessment of the Vulnerability of Australian Forests to the Impacts of Climate Change – Synthesis

This report is a synthesis of the Forest Vulnerability Assessment project undertaken by a consortium of research groups. The project was an initiative of the Natural Resource Management Ministerial Council (NRMMC) and undertaken under the auspices of the National Climate Change Adaptation Research Facility (NCCARF), Griffith University. The project was established in 2009 to: • review current knowledge of the likely biophysical and socio-economic consequences of climate change on Australia’s forests, • understand the vulnerabilities of Australia’s forests, • identify current adaptation actions, and • identify information gaps to improve adaptative capacity. The assessment was carried out using a basic vulnerability assessment framework which considers sensitivity, exposure and adaptive capacity to determine the vulnerability of Australia’s forests to climate change. Each of these factors was considered in turn using the general scientific literature. In addition interviews with stakeholders were used to identify key issues and current actions by forest managers and policy-makers. Four reports were developed and published as result of each of those projects (Cockfield et al., 2010, Medlyn et al., 2010, Wilson and Turton, 2010, Woods et al., 2010). This synthesis report was developed based on those reports. The work was undertaken primarily in 2010 but this final report was not accepted for release until November 2012. A regional scale assessment was also carried out using an agro-ecological classification of Australia to understand forest vulnerability to climate change within each region (Section 8).Full Tex