ORIGINAL ARTICLE Sustainable forest management in a mountain region in the Central Western Carpathians, northeastern Slovakia: the role of climate change Toma ´s ˇ Hla ´sny 1,2 • Ivan Barka 1,2 • Ladislav Kulla 1 • Toma ´s ˇ Bucha 1 • Ro ´bert Sedma ´k 3 • Jir ˇı ´ Trombik 2 Received: 4 March 2015 / Accepted: 27 October 2015 Ó Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2015 Abstract European forestry is facing many challenges, including the need to adapt to climate change and an unprecedented increase in forest damage. We investigated these challenges in a Norway spruce-dominated mountain region in Central Europe. We used the model Sibyla to explore forest biomass production to the year 2100 under climate change and under two alternative management systems: the currently applied management (CM), which strives to actively improve the forest’s adaptive capacity, and no management (NM) as a reference. Because biodi- versity is thought to have mostly positive effects on the adaptive capacity of forests and on the quality of ecosystem services, we explored how climate change and manage- ment affect indicators of biodiversity. We found a differ- ential response across the elevation-climatic gradient, including a drought-induced decrease in biomass produc- tion over large areas. With CM, the support of non-spruce species and the projected improvement of their growth increased tree species diversity. The promotion of species with higher survival rates led to a decrease in forest dam- age relative to both the present conditions and NM. NM preserved the high density of over-matured spruce trees, which caused forest damage to increase. An abundance of dead wood and large standing trees, which can increase biodiversity, increased with NM. Our results suggest that commercial spruce forests, which are not actively adapted to climate change, tend to preserve their monospecific composition at a cost of increased forest damage. The persisting high rates of damage along with the adverse effects of climate change make the prospects of such for- ests uncertain. Keywords European temperate forest Á Forest disturbances Á Forest management Á Sibyla model Á Climate change adaptation Introduction Future forest development has been increasingly consid- ered during recent decades (e.g., Matala et al. 2003; Hla ´sny et al. 2011, 2014a; Lindner et al. 2014), and forest mod- eling tools have been substantially improved (e.g., Millington et al. 2011; Huber et al. 2013; Wang et al. Electronic supplementary material The online version of this article (doi:10.1007/s10113-015-0894-y) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users. & Toma ´s ˇ Hla ´sny hlasny@nlcsk.org Ivan Barka ivan.barka@gmail.com Ladislav Kulla kulla@nlcsk.org Toma ´s ˇ Bucha bucha@nlcsk.org Ro ´bert Sedma ´k sedmak@tuzvo.sk Jirˇı ´ Trombik jiri.trombik@gmail.com 1 Department of Forest and Landscape Ecology, National Forest Centre – Forest Research Institute Zvolen, T. G. Masaryka 22, 960 92 Zvolen, Slovak Republic 2 Department of Forest Protection and Entomology, Faculty of Forestry and Wood Sciences, Czech University of Life Sciences Prague, Kamy ´cka ´ 129, 165 21 Prague 6, Czech Republic 3 Faculty of Forestry and Wood Sciences, Technical University in Zvolen, T. G. Masaryka 24, 960 92 Zvolen, Slovak Republic 123 Reg Environ Change DOI 10.1007/s10113-015-0894-y