Mountain Spruce Forests As Hotspots for Extremes: Impacts, Resilience and Management Priorities (MountEx)
Clemens Blattert
Leo Bont
Alessandra Bottero
Leon Bührle
Kevin Patrick Helzel
Tobias Kalt
Adrian Ringenbach
Janine Schweier
Petia Simeonova Nikolova
Christian Walter Temperli
Alexander Bast (former member)
2021 - 2024
Cooperation Financing
Mountain spruce forests, crucial for protecting against natural hazards and providing other essential ecosystem services, face escalating threats from climate change. The MountEx project identifies forests at risk, develops adaption strategies, and optimizes operational forest management planning. This will contribute to improved decision support for management priorities and strategies related to future extreme disturbances in spruce-dominated mountain forests.
Spruce-dominated mountain forests comprise over 50 percent of Switzerland’s alpine forests, serving as habitats for diverse species and providing critical ecosystem services such as carbon sequestration, water retention, and soil stabilization. They are a source of timber, an important place of recreation, and they safeguard communities by acting as protection against natural hazards such as avalanches and rockfall. However, as climate change drives more frequent and severe extreme weather events and disturbances, mountain spruce forests are increasingly at risk – and the degradation of these forests could have severe consequences for ecosystems, the economy, and human health. Effective and proactive management strategies are therefore urgently needed to enhance forest resilience, protect their biodiversity, and safeguard the vital ecosystem services they provide.
For Future-Proof Forests ¶
The MountEx project aims to provide the knowledge, strategies, and tools needed to guide the effective management of mountain spruce forests under the influence of previously unthinkable extreme disturbances. Collaborating closely with local foresters and cantonal authorities, the project focuses on three key research questions:
1. Identifying Predisposition and Risk: How can we integrate spatial data and models on forest structure, site conditions, and potential natural hazards to create interactive maps that identify multiple risks under extreme disturbances?
2. Evaluating Management Options: What are the most effective proactive (pre-disturbance) and reactive (post-disturbance) management strategies for mitigating risks to ecosystem services?
3. Enhancing Operational Planning: How can we improve operational planning and the economic assessment of management strategies in the context of extreme disturbances?
Innovative Approaches and Tools ¶
Upon project completion at the end of 2025, MountEx will have delivered several valuable outputs that support the sustainable management of spruce-dominated mountain forests:
- Predisposition Maps: A set of spatially continuous maps that highlight those forest areas that are particularly susceptible to bark beetle infestations, windthrow, and snow breakage. The maps will incorporate numerous forest structure parameters and site factors, including the protective role of forests against rockfall and avalanches. The aim is to support a holistic approach to forest management prioritization, enabling targeted interventions.
- Best-Practice Guides: A series of management recommendations to enhance mountain spruce-dominated forest stand resistance and resilience.
- Optimization Method: A novel method that subdivides forest areas into management units. The potential costs and benefits of silvicultural intervention on forest resilience and the economy are assessed for each unit, supporting cost-effective and sustainable forest management.
- MountEx Dashboard: A user-friendly and interactive web application that integrates all of MountEx’s insights into a single platform to help stakeholders and practitioners make informed decisions.
By developing these valuable tools and strategies, the MountEx project is working to ensure spruce-dominated mountain forests can withstand and recover from extreme disturbances, securing the health of Switzerland’s mountain ecosystems – and the essential services they provide – against a future in which extreme events are increasingly commonplace.
The MountEx project is part of WSL’s Extremes Research Program, which aims to equip Swiss stakeholders with the resources needed to meet the challenges of future extreme events.