Special Session at EMS2025: Forests, agriculture and climates across scales

2025-03-10

Forests, agriculture and climates across scales 

  Weather conditions directly influence forests and agriculture. Hail, diseases and drought can have devastating effects on forests’ health and crops. However, meteorology-related risks can be reduced through better timing of harvests, improved, climate-smart forest management, application of pesticides or through use of irrigation systems. A clear picture of current and future weather conditions, especially along with better understanding of extreme weather events and fine-scale (microclimatic) variations in non-urban environments is relevant, for example, to ensure resilient forestry, food production and biodiversity.

Microclimatic conditions contrast strongly with the macroclimatic conditions measured by standard weather stations and commonly represented by gridded climate data. This is evident for instance in forests, where variations in forest structures (e.g. canopy openness) form temperature and humidity regimes that are significantly buffered from the conditions outside forests. Although there is ample evidence that microclimates drive many ecosystem functions and ecological processes, fine-scale variation in climate is still rarely considered in environmental research, management and applications. Thus, a better understanding of the current and future microclimates can support the provision of ecosystem services and enhance the efficacy and benefits of nature conservation.  

This session aims to advance our understanding of the role of weather and climate variability and change across spatial scales on forests and agriculture. We invite presentations related but not limited to: 

- Micrometeorology and microclimate, measuring (e.g. ground-based, remote-sensing, citizen science, Big Data etc.) and modeling (both statistical and mechanistic) at scales operating below the conventional climate grids, from meters to hundreds of meters
- Impact of weather and climate extremes on agriculture and forests
- Biometeorology and bioclimatology, agrometeorological modeling 
- Climate-smart management in mitigating the impacts of weather and climate induced disturbances (e.g. droughts, fires, pests, diseases) 
- Development of approaches to produce future climate projections operating at fine-spatial scales 
- Wildfires and forest fires
- Decision support systems & the representation of uncertainty and added values of increased resolution for end-users
- Interactions/feedback of forestry and agriculture end users