Towards a Decision Support Tool for Adapting French Forests to Climate Change

This study reports on the Traitaut project, which designed a web-based decision support system to help French forest managers adapt species composition under uncertain climate scenarios. The authors established an R&D community and compiled a bibliographic database on species autoecology. They analyzed functional traits from the TRY database, highlighting the need to record corresponding abiotic factors for each measurement. A survey of European decision tools identified best practices and gaps, leading to precise specifications for a French adaptation tool. The resulting framework supports growth and distribution modeling of forest species for long-term management.