Simulating the effect of climate change on forest dynamics of Soyang lake watershed in Korea
P 2.1 in Biodiversität: Verbreitung, Funktion und Erhaltung
Forest provides many ecosystem services both to natural systems and human societies. These services include the place for biodiversity and the forest products such as food, medicinal and timber products. Forest also plays a crucial role in regulation hydrological process and protection of soil. As global average temperature is increase, we experience unprecedented extreme weathers more frequently. However, it is hard to know consequences of these changes on forest ecosystems. These kinds of weathers trigger severe drought, more frequent hurricane, cold damages, and fire after drought. These environmental changes and consequence of disturbances alter forest structure and at worst, destroy forest. So predicting forest dynamics is important to estimate changes of forest ecosystem services and maintain them.
Soyang lake is one of the biggest artificial reservoir in Korea. This was intended to fulfill the needs of drinking water, irrigation and producing electricity. Most part of the catchment is covered by forest with only small fraction of agriculture area. In other words, forest is a primary ecosystem in this area. Therefore, predicting forest dynamics is essential for natural resources management.
The central object of this research is to predict the effect of climate change on forest dynamics through fire regime changes, species introduction and outbreaks of pests. LandClim, the spatially explicit landscape model, will be used in this research as a main tool to simulate forest structure.