Rising cost of disturbances for forestry in Europe under climate change

nature climate change Article https://doi.org/10.1038/s41558-025-02408-9 Rising cost of disturbances for forestry in Europe under climate change Received: 14 January 2025 Accepted: 22 July 2025 Published online: 18 September 2025 Check for updates Johannes S. Mohr 1,9 , Félix Bastit2,9, Marc Grünig 1,3, Thomas Knoke 4, Werner Rammer 1, Cornelius Senf 5, Dominik Thom 6,7 & Rupert Seidl 1,8 Climate change has large economic costs for society. An important effect is the disruption of natural resource supply by climate-mediated disturbances such as wildfires, pest outbreaks and storms. Here we show that disturbance-induced losses for Europe’s timber-based forestry could increase from the current €115 billion to €247 billion under severe climate change. This would diminish the timber value of Europe’s forests by up to 42% and reduce the current gross value added of the forestry sector by up to 15%. Central Europe emerges as a continental hotspot of disturbance costs, with projected future costs of up to €19,885 per hectare. Simultaneous climate-related increases in forest productivity could offset future economic losses from disturbances in Northern and Central Europe but not in Southern Europe. We find high disturbance-related cost of unmitigated warming, highlighting that climate change adaptation in forestry is not only an ecological but also an economic imperative. Climate change has strong impacts on global ecosystems1,2. These impacts are likely to result in high economic costs for society3. Recent studies estimated economic losses related to climate impacts on global ecosystems to several trillion dollars4, with income reductions of 19%5, several hundred billions of dollars needed to compensate for loss and damage6, and reductions in the gross domestic product of 1.2% per 1 °C increase in global mean temperature7. In particular, the already observed8 and projected future9–11 increases in frequency and intensity of extreme events, such as droughts, wildfires and floods, have severe consequences for the global economy4,12. Forest ecosystems are particularly prone to climatic extremes because trees are sessile and long lived13,14. As forest products are central to a bio-based economy15–17, changing extreme events pose a major challenge for a wider use of bio-based materials. A major concern in this regard are forest disturbances, that is, large-scale pulses of tree mortality from wildfires, pest outbreaks and storms18,19. Forest disturbances have increased in frequency and severity in many parts of the globe in recent decades20,21 and are expected to further increase under continued climate change22. A hotspot of changing forest disturbances is Europe, where disturbance rates doubled in less than 20 years for major disturbance agents20, and a massive recent pulse of tree mortality was unprecedented in at least 170 years23. Societies in Europe are strongly dependent on forests for providing jobs, supporting rural livelihoods, and contributing to environmental and economic well-being24. Yet, the continental-scale economic impacts of climate-mediated disturbances remain unclear so far. Understanding the economic impacts of disturbances is complex, as interactions with other climate-induced changes have to be considered. For instance, climate change affects forest productivity, with decreases projected for water-limited regions25 but broad-scale increases expected due to CO2 fertilization25–27 and an extension of the growing season particularly in boreal and mountain ecosystems28,29. Ecosystem Dynamics and Forest Management Group, School of Life Sciences, Technical University of Munich (TUM), Freising, Germany. 2BETA, Université de Lorraine, Université de Strasbourg, AgroParisTech, CNRS, INRAE, Nancy, France. 3Department of Epidemiology and Public Health, Swiss Tropical and Public Health Institute (Swiss TPH), Allschwil, Switzerland. 4Institute of Forest Management, School of Life Sciences, Technical University of Munich (TUM), Freising, Germany. 5Earth Observation for Ecosystem Management Group, School of Life Sciences, Technical University of Munich (TUM), Freising, Germany. 6Chair of Silviculture, Institute of Silviculture and Forest Protection, TUD Dresden University of Technology, Tharandt, Germany. 7Gund Institute for Environment, University of Vermont, Burlington, VT, USA. 8Berchtesgaden National Park, Berchtesgaden, Germany. 9These authors contributed equally: Johannes S. Mohr, Félix Bastit. e-mail: 1 Nature Climate Change | Volume 15 | October 2025 | 1078–1083 1078 Article Climate change doubles the costs of natural disturbances Under historical conditions (1981–2005), the economic costs of natural disturbances in Europe (loss of forest values) were €115 ± 3 billion (mean ± s.d., Fig. 1), with an average annual cost of €1,729 ± 48 million yr−1 and an average cost per unit area of €1,265 ± 35 ha−1. These costs were the result of on average 74.5 million m3 of timber disturbed per year (Table 1). Disturbances reduced the total forest value of Europe by 28.6 ± 0.7% compared with the counterfactual of no disturbance. Under climate change, total future timber harvest increased by 17.1%, from 259.6 to 304.1 million m3 yr−1 (for the period 2076–2100) under scenario RCP4.5 (increases of 12.9% and 28.0% under RCP2.6 and RCP8.5, respectively), resulting from both increasing productivity (increasing planned harvest) and increasing disturbance (increasing unplanned harvest; Table 1). Distinct increases in unplanned, that is, disturbance-induced, harvests increased costs of disturbance to €186 ± 8 billion under RCP4.5, and up to €247 ± 15 billion under RCP8.5 (RCP2.6: €146 ± 3 billion). This reduced the potential forest value relative to the counterfactual of no disturbance by up to 42.1 ± 2.5%, and translated to average annual costs of €2,783 ± 116 million yr−1 under RCP4.5 (RCP2.6: €2,191 ± 42 million yr−1; RCP8.5: €3,711 ± 218 million yr−1), and average costs per unit area of €2,037 ± 85 ha−1 (RCP2.6: Nature Climate Change | Volume 15 | October 2025 | 1078–1083 200 Forest value loss due to disturbances (billion €) Changing forest productivity interacts with disturbance costs: increasing productivity increases the growing stock, which in turn enhances the timber value of forests. Simultaneously, productivity-related increases in harvest levels lead to higher returns that might partly or completely offset the economic costs of increasing disturbances30,31. These interactions require a joint evaluation of the economic consequences of changing disturbance and productivity30,31. Here we present an estimate of the current and future economic costs of forest disturbances at continental scale, accounting for climate-mediated changes in both forest productivity and disturbance in Europe. Specifically, we investigated the historical costs of disturbance on the timber-based forest value (under the climate conditions of the reference period 1981–2005) and how they are li (...truncated)