Wind Impact Assessment in Forest Ecosystems

Wind impact assessment in forest ecosystems examines how turbulent airflows and extreme wind events affect tree stability, forest structure and ecosystem functions. This field integrates meteorological analysis, tree biomechanics and landscape evaluation to quantify the frequency and severity of wind-induced disturbances such as windthrow and stem breakage. Researchers employ a spectrum of approaches ranging from empirical storm‐damage indices and spatially explicit disturbance databases to mechanistic and data‐driven models that predict both the probability and magnitude of damage at tree and stand scales. Key objectives include identifying tree and stand traits that confer resistance or susceptibility, mapping historical wind damage to inform risk assessments, and developing early‐warning systems that support adaptive forest management. Practical applications extend to sustainable timber harvesting, post‐storm salvage operations and the design of resilient forest landscapes under changing climate conditions.

Research from Nature Portfolio

Analyses of long‐term forest loss records across Western, Central and Northern Europe have revealed a marked increase in storm intensity since the late twentieth century. By relating ratios of primary damage to total growing stock, researchers identified a distinct change‐point around 1990, after which the severity of destructive storms rose threefold and shifted seasonally from autumn towards winter. This work underscores evolving storm patterns and their implications for regional forest vulnerability. Concurrently, advances in machine learning have enabled the development of impact‐based models that classify individual tree susceptibility in high‐wind environments. By training neural networks and support vector machines on stand and tree variables, such as height and crown dimensions, these models achieve high predictive accuracy and offer a novel decision‐support tool for forest managers seeking to minimise windthrow risk during harvesting and stand manipulation.

Wind Impact Assessment in Forest Ecosystems publication trend

The graph below shows the total number of articles in wind impact assessment in forest ecosystems across all publications each year (not limited to Nature Index journals).

Technical terms

Windthrow: The uprooting or snapping of trees due to wind forces.

Primary damage (PD): The immediate volume or area of forest loss directly caused by a wind event.

Total growing stock (TGS): The aggregate volume of living timber in a given forest area.

Index‐based risk assessment: The use of simplified metrics or thresholds to predict the likelihood and severity of wind damage.

Machine learning model: A computational approach that learns patterns from data to forecast tree or stand vulnerability to wind.

References

1. Increasing large scale windstorm damage in Western, Central and Northern European forests, 1951–2010. Scientific Reports (2017).
2. Modeling of trees failure under windstorm in harvested Hyrcanian forests using machine learning techniques. Scientific Reports (2021).
3. Key traits influencing the resistance of Eucalyptus camaldulensis to wind damage in coastal areas of South China. Frontiers in Plant Science (2024).
4. Review article: A European perspective on wind and storm damage – from the meteorological background to index-based approaches to assess impacts. Natural Hazards and Earth System Science (2023).
5. A spatially explicit database of wind disturbances in European forests over the period 2000–2018. Earth System Science Data (2020).