Beech and pine trees are better together

An in-depth study of how pine trees and beech trees interact in European forests can help maintain ecological balance in the face of climate change.
The Scots pine, an evergreen coniferous tree, mixes well across European forests with the European beech, a common hardwood tree. Generally, these two important European trees grow better together than single-tree forests, creating robust ecosystems for other living organisms. However, the delicate balance and competition between the two tree types, which depends on factors such as CO2 concentrations and climate change, remains poorly understood.

Against this backdrop, the EU-funded ECOPYREN3 (Integration of ecological processes in forest models to assess long-term effects of management and global change on forests in southwestern Europe) project researched environmental factors and modelled tree growth to advance research on the topic. The Final Report Summary and an article (Resilience Assessment of Lowland Plantations Using an Ecosystem Modeling Approach) is available through the project's data sheet on CORDIS.

Source: CORDIS