Impacts of Forest Management-Induced Productivity Changes on Future Land Use and Land Cover Change

Anthropogenic land use and land cover change (LULCC) is projected to continue in the future. However, the influence of forest management on forest productivity change and subsequent LULCC projections remains under-investigated. This study explored the impacts of forest management-induced change in forest productivity on LULCC throughout the 21st century. Specifically, we developed a framework to softly couple the Global Change Analysis Model and Global Timber Model to consider forest management-induced forest productivity change and projected future LULCC across the five Shared Socioeconomic Pathways (SSPs). We found future increases in forest management intensity overall drive the increase of forest productivity. The forest management-induced forest productivity change shows diverse responses across all SSPs, with a global increase from 2015 to 2100 ranging from 3.9% (SSP3) to 8.8% (SSP1). This further leads to an overall decrease in the total area with a change of land use types, with the largest decrease under SSP1 (−7.5%) and the smallest decrease under SSP3 (−0.7%) in 2100. Among land use types, considering forest management-induced change significantly reduces the expansion of managed forest and also reduces the loss of natural land in 2100 across SSPs. This suggests that ignoring forest management-induced forest productivity change underestimates the efficiency of wood production, overestimates the managed forest expansion required to meet the future demand, and consequently, potentially introduces uncertainties into relevant analyses, for example, carbon cycle and biodiversity. Thus, we advocate to better account for the impacts of forest management in future LULCC projections.