FitForests – Looking at how Ireland’s Forests are shaping up to climate change

Abstract

Climate change is already having impacts on the health of the world’s forests. Healthy forests are critical to mitigate climate change. So how are Ireland’s forests shaping up? The FitForest is a DAFM-funded project which aim to address knowledge gaps in species and provenance selection to identify those that may be more adapted to future climatic conditions. High diversity among populations that may have phenotypic plasticity and/ or adaptive potential may be better adapted to capitalize on changing environmental conditions. This adaptive capacity is commonly assessed by studying the traits of trees which convey some inherent advantage over other populations which allows them to prosper in certain environments (e.g. late bud flush or water use efficiency). The project is a collaboration between a team of researchers from Teagasc, the Agri- Food and Biosciences Institute (NI), UCD, and climatologists from NUI-Maynooth.