Forest ecosystems are important components of the global carbon cylce in at least two ways. First, among terrestrial ecosystems, forests are major sinks contributors that remove nearly 3 billion tons of anthropogenic carbon each year through net growth, absorbing about 30% of all CO2 emissions from fossil fuel buring and net deforestation. Second, 4 billion hectares of forest ecosystems (about 30% of the global land area) store large reservoirs of carbon, together holding more than double the amount of carbon being in the atmosphere (Candell & Raupach 2008).
Adapting forest management to the challengo of climate change requires the evalutation of its impact in the medium to long term and the determination of measures that can be undertaken to reduce this impact in the future (Spittlehouse & Stewart 2003; Allen et al. 2010).
A broader-level approach comprising both the carbon sequestration in the growing biomass but also the utilization ortiented path in the harvesting of biomass, can be expected to provide overarching knowledge to define carbon smart forest management systems to cope with climate change.
-> background and the objectives of CARE4C,
-> the defined work packages and