Large pulses of tree mortality have ushered in a major reorganization of Europe’s forest ecosystems. To initiate a robust next generation of trees, the species that are planted today need to be climatically suitable throughout the entire twenty-first century. Here we developed species distribution models for 69 European tree species based on occurrence data from 238,080 plot locations to investigate the option space for current forest management in Europe. We show that the average pool of tree species continuously suitable throughout the century is smaller than that under current and end-of-century climate conditions, creating a tree species bottleneck for current management. If the need for continuous climate suitability throughout the lifespan of a tree planted today is considered, climate change shrinks the tree species pool available to management by between 33% and 49% of its current values (40% and 54% of potential end-of-century values), under moderate (Representative Concentration Pathway 2.6) and severe (Representative Concentration Pathway 8.5) climate change, respectively. This bottleneck could have strong negative impacts on timber production, carbon storage and biodiversity conservation, as only 3.18, 3.53 and 2.56 species of high potential for providing these functions remain suitable throughout the century on average per square kilometre in Europe. Our results indicate that the option space for silviculture is narrowing substantially because of climate change and that an important adaptation strategy in forestry—creating mixed forests—might be curtailed by widespread losses of climatically suitable tree species.

树木死亡率的大幅上升引发了欧洲森林生态系统的重大重组。为了培育出健壮的下一代树木，今天种植的树种需要适应整个二十一世纪的气候。在这里，我们根据 238,080 个样地位置的出现数据开发了 69 个欧洲树种的物种分布模型，以调查欧洲当前森林管理的选择空间。我们发现，整个世纪持续适宜的树种平均库小于当前和本世纪末气候条件下的树种库，这为当前管理造成了树种瓶颈。如果考虑到当今种植的树木在整个生命周期中需要持续的气候适宜性，气候变化将使可供管理的树种库缩小其当前值的 33% 至 49%（潜在终止树种的 40% 至 54%）。 -世纪值），分别在中等（代表性浓度路径 2.6）和严重（代表性浓度路径 8.5）气候变化下。这一瓶颈可能会对木材生产、碳储存和生物多样性保护产生强烈的负面影响，因为欧洲平均每平方公里只有 3.18、3.53 和 2.56 个具有高潜力提供这些功能的物种在整个世纪保持适宜。我们的研究结果表明，由于气候变化，造林的选择空间正在大幅缩小，而林业中一项重要的适应策略——创建混交林——可能会因气候适宜树种的广泛消失而受到限制。