Response of Global Forest Management to Changes in Wood Demand

Global wood harvests have steadily increased over the last several decades and are projected to continue growing to match demand for wood products. How forest managers respond to changes in wood demand depends not just on timber prices and production costs but also on competition with other land uses, changes in forest productivity, and land use policies. Wood demand projections are sensitive to assumptions about socioeconomic development, including population growth, economic growth, and policy changes. Using a spatially detailed, process-based land use model (LandSyMM), we simulate global wood demand, harvests, and forest management intensity under a range of future socioeconomic (Shared Socioeconomic Pathways; SSPs) and climate (Representative Concentration Pathways; RCPs) scenarios. Wood demand is projected for each country using a price-elastic demand system that models changes in demand for industrial roundwood and wood fuel in response to changes in countries' incomes and endogenously modelled wood prices. Competition for land between forestry and agriculture, including for food and animal feed, is explicitly represented. We find that future wood harvests and forest management intensity vary considerably between scenarios. Different regions show heterogeneous responses to changes in wood demand, with global demand increasing between 27% (SSP1-RCP2.6) and 102% (SSP3-RCP7.0) by 2100. The results suggest that additional wood harvests will primarily be met through intensification of forest management and an increase in potential yields arising from climate change and CO₂ fertilisation. However, interactions between extreme events, nutrient limitations, and CO₂-driven productivity gains remain uncertain and are not fully captured in the modelled results. Understanding how global forest management will change and its impact on forest structure, species composition, and carbon storage is critical in addressing climate change mitigation and biodiversity protection.