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Input files for the ForClim model (version 4.0.1) used in the associated paper. They can be used to to reproduce results of the simulation study. The ForClim model, including the source code, executable and documentation, is freely available under an Open Access license from the website of the original developers at https://ites-fe.ethz.ch/openaccess/. The original climatic dataset used to generate the ForClim input climate files at each site in South Tyrol is freely available at https://doi.pangaea.de/10.1594/PANGAEA.924502 while the CHELSA climate data for future scenarios are available at https://www.chelsa-climate.org. If interested in using this dataset for a research study or a project, please contact Marco Mina ----------------------------------------------------------------------- Hillebrand L, Marzini S, Crespi A, Hiltner U & Mina M (2023) Contrasting impacts of climate change on protection forests of the Italian Alps. Frontiers in Forests and Global Change, 6, 2023 https://doi.org/10.3389/ffgc.2023.1240235 ABSTRACT. Protection forests play a key role in protecting settlements, people, and infrastructures from gravitational hazards such as rockfalls and avalanches in mountain areas. Rapid climate change is challenging the role of protection forests by altering their dynamics, structure, and composition. Information on local- and regional-scale impacts of climate change on protection forests is critical for planning adaptations in forest management. We used a model of forest dynamics (ForClim) to assess the succession of mountain forests in the Eastern Alps and their protective effects under future climate change scenarios. We investigated eleven representative forest sites along an elevational gradient across multiple locations within an administrative region, covering wide differences in tree species structure, composition, altitude, and exposition. We evaluated protective performance against rockfall and avalanches using numerical indices (i.e., linker functions) quantifying the degree of protection from metrics of simulated forest structure and composition. Our findings reveal that climate warming has a contrasting impact on protective effects in mountain forests of the Eastern Alps. Climate change is likely to not affect negatively all protection forest stands but its impact depends on site and stand conditions. Impacts were highly contingent to the magnitude of climate warming, with increasing criticality under the most severe climate projections. Forests in lower-montane elevations and those located in dry continental valleys showed drastic changes in forest structure and composition due to drought-induced mortality while subalpine forests mostly profited from rising temperatures and a longer vegetation period. Overall, avalanche protection will likely be negatively affected by climate change, while the ability of forests to maintain rockfall protection depends on the severity of expected climate change and their vulnerability due to elevation and topography, with most subalpine forests less prone to loosing protective effects. Proactive measures in management should be taken in the near future to avoid losses of protective effects in the case of severe climate change in the Alps. Given the heterogeneous impact of climate warming, such adaptations can be aided by model-based projections and high local resolution studies to identify forest stand types that might require management priority for maintaining protective effects in the future.

Suitability maps (raster format: geotiff) of Quercus frainetto, computed using the ForestFocus European dataset of species presence/absence. The adopted suitability model estimates the optimal environmental conditions for European tree species under present and future climates. Available years: 2000, 2020, 2050, 2080. For year 2000 the observed (WorldClim) climate conditions have been used. For years 2020, 2050, 2080 the climate conditions simulated for the climate change scenarios A2 and B2 have been used (by means of the climate models CCCMA, CSIRO, HANDCM3 and of an ensemble model of them).

This dataset contains spatial predictions of the potential environmental spaces for pingos, ice-wedge polygons and rock glaciers across the Northern Hemisphere permafrost areas. The potential environmental spaces, i.e. conditions where climate, topography and soil properties are suitable for landform presence, were predicted with statistical ensemble modelling employing geospatial data on environmental conditions at 30 arc-second resolution (~1 km). In addition to the baseline period (1950-2000), the predictions are provided for 2041-2060 and 2061-2080 using climate-forcing scenarios (Representative Concentration Pathways 4.5 and 8.5). The resulting dataset consists of five spatial predictions for each landform in GeoTIFF format.The data provide new information on 1) the fine-scale spatial distribution of permafrost landforms in the Northern Hemisphere, 2) the potential future alterations in the environmental suitability for permafrost landforms due to climate change, and 3) the circumpolar distribution of various ground ice types, and can 4) facilitate efforts to inventory permafrost landforms in incompletely mapped areas.

Suitability maps (raster format: geotiff) of Fraxinus excelsior, computed using the ForestFocus European dataset of species presence/absence. The adopted suitability model estimates the optimal environmental conditions for European tree species under present and future climates. Available years: 2000, 2020, 2050, 2080. For year 2000 the observed (WorldClim) climate conditions have been used. For years 2020, 2050, 2080 the climate conditions simulated for the climate change scenarios A2 and B2 have been used (by means of the climate models CCCMA, CSIRO, HANDCM3 and of an ensemble model of them).

Upwelling processes bring nutrient-rich waters from the deep ocean to the surface. Areas of upwelling are often associated with high productivity, offering great economic value in terms of fisheries. The sensitivity of spring/summer-time coastal upwelling systems to climate change has recently received a lot of attention. Several studies have suggested that their intensity may increase in the future while other authors have shown decreasing intensity in their equatorward portions. Yet, recent observations do not show robust evidence of this intensification. The Senegalo-Mauritanian upwelling system (SMUS) located at the southern edge of the north Atlantic system (12°N–20°N) and most active in winter/spring has been largely excluded from these studies. Here, the seasonal cycle of the SMUS and its response to climate change is investigated in the database of the Coupled Models Inter comparison Project Phase 5 (CMIP5). Upwelling magnitude and surface signature are characterized by several sea surface temperature and wind stress indices. We highlight the ability of the climate models to reproduce the system, as well as their biases. The simulations suggest that the intensity of the SMUS winter/spring upwelling will moderately decrease in the future, primarily because of a reduction of the wind forcing linked to a northward shift of Azores anticyclone and a more regional modulation of the low pressures found over Northwest Africa. The implications of such an upwelling reduction on the ecosystems and local communities exploiting them remains very uncertain.

This study focuses on formulating the most sustainable concrete by incorporating recycled concrete aggregates and other products retrieved from construction and demolition (C&D) activities. Both recycled coarse aggregates (RCA) and recycled fine aggregates (RFA) are firstly used to fully replace the natural coarse and fine aggregates in the concrete mix design. Later, the cement rich ultrafine particles, recycled glass powder and mineral fibres recovered from construction and demolition wastes (CDW) are further incorporated at a smaller rate either as cement substituent or as supplementary additives. Remarkable properties are noticed when the RCA (4–12 mm) and RFA (0.25–4 mm) are fully used to replace the natural aggregates in a new concrete mix. The addition of recycled cement rich ultrafines (RCU), Recycled glass ultrafines (RGU) and recycled mineral fibres (RMF) into recycled concrete improves the modulus of elasticity. The final concrete, which comprises more than 75% (wt.) of recycled components/materials, is believed to be the most sustainable and green concrete mix. Mechanical properties and durability of this concrete have been studied and found to be within acceptable limits, indicating the potential of recycled aggregates and other CDW components in shaping sustainable and circular construction practices. The authors wish to acknowledge the financial support from EU Horizon 2020 Project VEEP ‘‘Cost-Effective Recycling of C&DW in High Added Value Energy Efficient Prefabricated Concrete Compo-nents for Massive Retrofitting of our Built Environment” (No.723582).

The problems of environmental pollution in the conditions of high dust content in the air during the development of coal mines in the territory of the Czech Republic are considered. A mechanism for making managerial decisions was developed using an integrated approach using the new technological process Nastup Tušimice (DNT) aimed at eliminating pollutant emissions and managing workers in dusty conditions in mining operations. The recommendations of active and passive measures aimed at reducing dustiness in the process of coal mining have also been developed.

The morphological spatial pattern analysis derived from the Forest/Non-Forest Map 2000 (FMAP2000) using the MSPA algorithm at a spatial resolution of 25-m. Further details available in: Soille P, Vogt P, 2008. Morphological segmentation of binary patterns. Pattern Recognition Letters 30, 4:456-459, doi: 10.1016/j.patrec.2008.10.015