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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.

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

Water resources index W quantifies the potential dependence of the world's lowland areas on water resources originating in mountain areas upstream. The data cover the timeframe from the 1960s (1961–1970) to the 2040s (2041–2050) in decadal steps. Data for projections from the 2010s onwards are available for three scenario pathways (SSP1-RCP4.5, SSP2-RCP6.0, SSP3-RCP6.0) and show median results from 5 CMIP5 GCMs (GFDL-ESM2M, HadGEM2-ES, IPSL-CM5A-LR, MIROC-ESM-CHEM, NorESM1‑M). The files are GeoTIFF formatted and in a regular raster of 5’×5’ (arc minutes in WGS 1984 coordinate system) The values of W can be classified using the following ranges: W ≤ -2 → Essential but vastly insufficient -2 < W < -1 → Essential but insufficient -1 ≤ W < 0 → Essential and sufficient W = 0 → No surplus from mountains 0 < W ≤ 1 → Supportive 1 < W < 2 → Minor W ≥ 2 → Negligible The values of W are rounded to four decimal places and limited to a range of -1110 to 9998. Values falling outside of that range are set to the nearest limit. he following flag values apply to W: -5555 indicates that there is no water balance surplus from the mountain area upstream, but a lowland water balance surplus; -6666 indicates that there is no water balance surplus from the mountain area upstream, and a lowland water balance deficit. Mountain areas and oceans are NODATA, large ice shields are omitted (Greenland: NODATA, Antarctica: not covered in extent). Mountain areas provide disproportionally high runoff in many parts of the world, and here we quantify for the first time their importance for water resources and food production from the viewpoint of the lowland areas downstream. The dataset maps the degree to which lowland areas potentially depend on runoff contributions from mountain areas (39% of land mass) between the 1960s and the 2040s.

[Experimental design: thermal performance experiments] All experiments were run in climate-controlled incubation facilities of the Institut Mediterrani d’Estudis Avançats (Mallorca, Spain). Following 48 hrs under ambient (collection site) conditions, samples were transferred to individual experimental aquaria, which consisted of a double layered transparent plastic bag filled with 2 L of filtered seawater (60 μm) (following Savva et al. 2018). 16 experimental bags were suspended within 80L temperature-controlled baths. In total, ten baths were used, one for each experimental temperature treatment. Bath temperatures were initially set to the acclimatization temperature (i.e. in situ temperatures) and were subsequently increased or decreased by 1 °C every 24 hours until the desired experimental temperature was achieved. Experimental temperatures were: 15, 18, 21, 24, 26, 28, 30, 32, 34 and 36°C (Table S2). For each species, four replicate aquarium bags were used for each temperature treatment with three individually marked seagrass shoots or three algal fragments placed into each bag. For P. oceanica, each marked plant was a single shoot including leaves, vertical rhizome and roots. For C. nodosa, each marked individual consisted of a 10 cm fragment of horizontal rhizome containing three vertical shoots. Individually marked seaweeds contained the holdfast, and 4-5 fronds of P. pavonica (0.98 ± 0.06 g FW; mean ± SE) or a standardised 5-8 cm fragment with meristematic tip for C. compressa (3.67 ± 0.1 g FW; mean ± SE). Experimental plants were cleaned of conspicuous epiphytes. Once the targeted temperatures were reached in all of the baths, experiments ran for 14 days for the algal species and 21 days for seagrasses to allow for measurable growth in all species at the end of the experiment. Experiments were conducted inside a temperature-controlled chamber at constant humidity and air temperature (15 °C). Bags were arranged in a 4x4 grid within each bath, enabling four species/population treatments to be run simultaneously. Bags were mixed within each bath so that one replicate bag was in each row and column of the grid, to minimise any potential within bath effects of bag position. Replicate bags were suspended with their surface kept open to allow gas exchange and were illuminated with a 14h light:10h dark photoperiod through fluorescent aquarium growth lamps. The water within the bags were mixed with aquaria pumps. The light intensity within each bag was measured via a photometric bulb sensor (LI-COR) and ranged between 180-258 μmol m-2 s-1. Light intensity was constant between experiments and did not significantly differ between experimental treatments (p > 0.05). The temperature in the baths was controlled and recorded with an IKS-AQUASTAR system, which was connected to heaters and thermometers. The seawater within the bags was renewed every 72 hrs and salinity was monitored daily with an YSI multi-parameter meter. Distilled water was added when necessary to ensure salinity levels remained within the range of 36-39 PSU, typical of the study region. Carbon and Nitrogen concentrations in the leaf tissue were measured at the end of the experiment for triplicates of the 24ºC treatment for each species and location (Fig. S2) at Unidade de Técnicas Instrumentais de Análise (University of Coruña, Spain) with an elemental analyser FlashEA112 (ThermoFinnigan). [Species description and distribution] The species used in this study are all common species throughout the Mediterranean Sea, although differ in their biological traits, evolutionary histories and thermo-geographic affinities (Fig. S1). P. oceanica is endemic to the Mediterranean Sea with the all other Posidonia species found in temperate Australia (Aires et al. 2011). The distribution of P. oceanica is restricted to the Mediterranean, spanning from Gibraltar in the west to Cyprus in the east and north into the Aegean and Adriatic seas (Telesca et al. 2015) (Fig. S1A). C. nodosa distribution extends across the Mediterranean Sea and eastern Atlantic Ocean, where it is found from south west Portugal, down the African coast to Mauritania and west to Macaronesia (Alberto et al. 2008) (Fig. S1B). Congeneric species of C. nodosa are found in tropical waters of the Red Sea and Indo-Pacific, suggesting origins in the region at least prior to the closure of the Suez Isthmus, approximately 10Mya. Like C. nodosa, Cystoseira compressa has a distribution that extends across the Mediterranean and into the eastern Atlantic, where it is found west to Macaronesia and south to northwest Africa (Fig. S1C). The genus Cystoseira has recently been reclassified to include just four species with all congeneric Cystoseira spp. having warm-temperate distributions from the Mediterranean to the eastern Atlantic (Orellana et al. 2019). The distribution of Padina pavonica is conservatively considered to resemble C. nodosa and C. compressa, spanning throughout the Mediterranean and into the eastern Atlantic. We considered the poleward distribution limit of P. pavonica to be the British Isles 50ºN (Herbert et al. 2016). P. pavonica was previously thought to have a global distribution, but molecular analysis of the genus has found no evidence to support this (Silberfeld et al. 2013). Instead it has been suggested that P. pavonica was potentially misclassified outside of the Mediterranean, due to morphological similarity with congeneric species (Silberfeld et al. 2013). Padina is a monophyletic genus with a worldwide distribution from tropical to cold temperate waters (Silberfeld et al. 2013). Most species have a regional distribution, with few confirmed examples of species spanning beyond a single marine realm (sensu Spalding et al. 2007). [Metabolic rates] Net production (NP), gross primary production (GPP) and respiration (R) were measured for all species from the four sites for five different experimental temperatures containing the in-situ temperature during sampling up to a 6ºC warming (see SM Table S3 for details). Individuals of the different species were moved to methacrylate cylinders containing seawater treated with UV radiation to remove bacteria and phytoplankton, in incubation tanks at the 5 selected temperatures. Cylinders were closed using gas-tight lids that prevent gas exchange with the atmosphere, containing an optical dissolved oxygen sensor (ODOS® IKS), with a measuring range from 0-200 % saturation and accuracy at 25ºC of 1% saturation, and magnetic stirrers inserted to ensure mixing along the height of the core. Triplicates were measured for each species and location, along with controls consisting in cylinders filled with the UV-treated seawater, in order to account for any residual production or respiration derived from microorganisms (changes in oxygen in controls was subtracted from treatments). Oxygen was measured continuously and recorded every 15 minutes for 24 hours. Changes in the dissolved oxygen (DO) were assumed to result from the biological metabolic processes and represent NP. During the night, changes in DO are assumed to be driven by R, as in the absence of light, no photosynthetic production can occur. R was calculated from the rate of change in oxygen at night, from half an hour after lights went off to half an hour before light went on (NP in darkness equalled R). NP was calculated from the rate of change in DO, at 15 min intervals, accumulated over each 24 h period. Assuming that daytime R equals that during the night, GPP was estimated as the sum of NP and R. To derive daily metabolic rates, we accumulated individual estimates of GPP, NP, and R resolved at 15 min intervals over each 24 h period during experiments and reported them in mmol O2 m−3 day−1. A detailed description of calculation of metabolic rates can be found at Vaquer-Sunyer et al. (Vaquer-Sunyer et al. 2015). [Thermal distribution and thermal safety margins] We estimated the realised thermal distribution for the four experimental species by downloading occurrence records from the Global Biodiversity Information Facility (GBIF.org (11/03/2020) GBIF Occurrence Download). Occurrence records from GBIF were screened for outliers and distributions were verified from the primary literature (Alberto et al. 2008, Draisma et al. 2010, Ni-Ni-Win et al. 2010, Silberfeld et al. 2013, Telesca et al. 2015, Orellana et al. 2019) and Enrique Ballesteros (pers. comms) (Fig. S1). Mean, 1st and 99th percentiles of daily SST’s were downloaded for each occurrence site for the period between 1981-2019 using the SST products described above (Table S4). Thermal range position of species at each experimental site were standardised by their global distribution using a Range Index (RI; Sagarin & Gaines 2002). Median SST at the experimental collection sites were standardized relative to the thermal range observed across a species realized distribution, using the equation: RI = 2(SM- DM)/DB where SM = the median temperature at the experimental collection site, Dm = the thermal midpoint of the species global thermal distribution and DB = range of median temperatures (ºC) that a species experiences across its distribution. The RI scales from -1 to 1, whereby ‘-1’ represents the cool, leading edge of a species distribution, ‘0’ represents the thermal midpoint of a species distribution and ‘1’ represents the warm, trailing edge of a species distribution (Sagarin & Gaines 2002). Thermal safety margins for each population were calculated as the difference between empirically derived upper thermal limits for each population and the maximum long term habitat temperatures recorded at collection sites. Each population’s thermal safety margin was plotted against its range position to examine patterns in thermal sensitivity across a species distribution. [Growth measurements and statistical analyses] Net growth rate of seagrass shoots was measured using leaf piercing-technique (Short & Duarte 2001). At the beginning of the experiment seagrass shoots were pierced just below the ligule with a syringe needle and shoot growth rate was estimated as the elongation of leaf tissue in between the ligule and the mark position of all leaves in a shoot at the end of the experiment, divided by the experimental duration. Net growth rate of macroalgae individuals was measured as the difference in wet weight at the end of the experiment from the beginning of the experiment divided by the duration of the experiment. Moisture on macroalgae specimens was carefully removed before weighing them. Patterns of growth in response to temperature were examined for each experimental population using a gaussian function: g = ke[-0.5(TMA-μ)2/σ2], where k = amplitude, μ = mean and σ = standard deviation of the curve. Best fit values for each parameter were determined using a non-linear least squares regression using the ‘nlstools’ package (Baty et al. 2015) in R (Team 2020). 95% CI for each of the parameters were calculated using non-parametric bootstrapping of the mean centred residuals. The relationship between growth metrics and the best-fit model was determined by comparing the sum of squared deviations (SS) of the observed data from the model, to the SS of 104 randomly resampled datasets. Growth metrics were considered to display a significant relationship to the best-fit model if the observed SS was smaller than the 5th percentile of randomised SS. Upper thermal limits were defined as the optimal temperature + 2 standard deviations (95th percentile of curve) or where net growth = 0. Samples that had lost all pigment or structural integrity by the end of the experiment were considered dead and any positive growth was treated as zero. Comparative patterns in thermal performance between populations have fundamental implications for a species thermal sensitivity to warming and extreme events. Despite this, within-species variation in thermal performance is seldom measured. Here we compare thermal performance between-species variation within communities, for two species of seagrass (Posidonia oceanica and Cymodocea nodosa) and two species of seaweed (Padina pavonica and Cystoseira compressa). Experimental populations from four locations spanning approximately 75% of each species global distribution and a 6ºC gradient in summer temperatures were exposed to 10 temperature treatments (15ºC to 36ºC), reflecting median, maximum and future temperatures. Experimental thermal performance displayed the greatest variability between species, with optimal temperatures differing by over 10ºC within the same location. Within-species differences in thermal performance were also important for P. oceanica which displayed large thermal safety margins within cool and warm-edge populations and small safety margins within central populations. Our findings suggest patterns of thermal performance in Mediterranean seagrasses and seaweeds retain deep ‘pre-Mediterranean’ evolutionary legacies, suggesting marked differences in sensitivity to warming within and between benthic marine communities. [Sample collection] Sample collections were conducted at two sites, separated by approximately 1 km, within each location. Collections were conducted at the same depth (1-3 m) at each location and were spaced across the reef or meadow to try and minimise relatedness between shoots or fragments. Upon collection, fragments were placed into a mesh bag and transported back to holding tanks in cool, damp, dark conditions (following Bennett et al. 2021). Fragments were kept in aerated holding tanks in the collection sites at ambient seawater temperature and maintained under a 14:10 light-dark cycle until transport back to Mallorca, where experiments were performed. Prior to transport, P. oceanica shoots were clipped to 25 cm length (from meristem to tip), to standardise initial conditions and remove old tissue for transport. For transport back to Mallorca, fragments were packed in layers within cool-boxes. Cool-packs were wrapped in damp tea towels (rinsed in seawater) and placed between layers of samples. Samples from Catalonia, Crete and Cyprus experienced approximately 12hrs of transit time. On arrival at the destination, samples were returned to holding tanks with aerated seawater and a 14:10 light-dark cycle. [Sea temperature measurements and reconstruction] Sea surface temperature data for each collection site were based on daily SST maps with a spatial resolution of 1/4°, obtained from the National Center for Environmental Information (NCEI, https://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/oisst (Reynolds et al. 2007). These maps have been generated through the optimal interpolation of Advanced Very High Resolution Radiometer (AVHRR) data for the period 1981-2019. Underwater temperature loggers (ONSET Hobo pro v2 Data logger) were deployed at each site and recorded hourly temperatures throughout one year. In order to obtain an extended time series of temperature at each collection site, a calibration procedure was performed comparing logger data with sea surface temperature from the nearest point on SST maps. In particular, SST data were linearly fitted to logger data for the common period. Then, the calibration coefficients were applied to the whole SST time series to obtain corrected-SST data and reconstruct daily habitat temperatures from 1981-2019. [Field collections] Thermal tolerance experiments were conducted on two seagrass species (P. oceanica and Cymodocea nodosa) and two brown seaweed species (Cystoseira compressa and P. pavonica) from four locations spanning 8 degrees in latitude and 30 degrees in longitude across the Mediterranean (Fig. 1, Table S1). These four species were chosen as they are dominant foundation species and cosmopolitan across the Mediterranean Sea. Thermal performance experiments from Catalonia and Mallorca were conducted simultaneously in June 2016 for seaweeds (P. pavonica and C. compressa) and in August 2016 for seagrasses (P. oceanica and C. nodosa). Experiments for all four species were conducted in July 2017 for Crete and in September 2017 for Cyprus. Horizon 2020 Framework Programme, Award: 659246; Juan de la Cierva Formacion, Award: FJCI-2016-30728; Spanish Ministry of Economy, Industry and Competitiveness, Award: MedShift, CGL2015-71809-P; Spanish Ministry of Science, Innovation and Universities, Award: SUMAECO, RTI2018-095441-B-C21