LAUSR

Forests are the main source of biomass production from solar energy and take up globally around 2.4 ± 0.4 PgC per year. Future changes in climate may affect forest growth and productivity. Currently, state-of-the-art Earth system models use prescribed wood harvest rates in future climate projections. These rates are defined by integrated assessment models (IAMs) only accounting for regional wood demand and largely ignoring the supply side from forests. Therefore, we apply the concept of sustained yield (SY) to represent a climate-adaptive forest management allowing a wood harvest rate oriented towards the actual rate of forest growth. Applying SY in JSBACH , the land component of the Max-Planck-Institute's Earth System Model, forced by several future climate scenarios, we realized a wood harvest amount twice to four times (3–9 PgCy −1 ) the rates prescribed by IAMs (1–3 PgCy −1 ). This highlights the need to account for the dependence of forest growth on climate. A life cycle analysis showed that the higher supply with SY as an adaptive forest harvesting rule may improve the net mitigation effects of forest harvest during the 21 st century by sequestering carbon in anthropogenic wood products (max. 379 PgC).