Optimisation of forest management under climate change in the French maritime pine (Pinus pinaster Aiton) forests

Key message 

A modern portfolio optimisation was performed on simulation data to optimise management alternatives of maritime pine (Pinus pinaster Aiton), under climate change. The objective was to maximise the biological productivity while minimising the inter-annual variability, until 2100, taking into account local variations in precipitation and soil available water capacity. We show that combining pine management alternatives helps to stabilise forest productivity. Optimal management portfolios must be flexible and reevaluated periodically to be adjusted to a changing climate.

Keywords
Climate change; Mean-variance optimisation; Portfolio optimisation; Forest management; GO+ model; Forest plantation

Publication
Ansaldi, L., Labarre, C., Makowski, D. et al. Optimisation of forest management under climate change in the French maritime pine (Pinus pinaster Aiton) forests. Annals of Forest Science 82, 27 (2025). https://doi.org/10.1186/s13595-025-01300-y

Data availability/Code availability
The datasets generated during and/or analysed during the current study are available on the GitLab repository of Lucile Ansaldi: https://forgemia.inra.fr/lucile.ansaldi/optimisation_forest_management_climate_change_maritime_pine. The custom code and/or software application generated during the current study are available on the GitLab repository of Lucile Ansaldi: https://forgemia.inra.fr/lucile.ansaldi/optimisation_forest_management_climate_change_maritime_pine.

Handling editor 
Andreas Bolte