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The effects of climate change (drought, increase in CO2 and temperature, etc.) on forests can lead to changes in productivity, intensification of disturbance events, changes in carbon balances, and alterations in species composition; changes which also determine significant variations in the economic value of forests. However, as climate change is expected to will occur much faster than the natural ability of tree species to adapt and migrate, the link between the respective site’s climate and local adaptations is at risk of being broken, therefore “local is best” is not the best option, and “the most local adapted is the best” should be considered. The identification of potentially adapted trees, as well as through phenotypic selection which takes a long time, can now be done through genotypic selection which can be faster. The latter is done with an indirect method: candidate genes and GWAS (genome-wide association study) which allows to identify the genotypes that can be better adapted to environmental abiotic stresses (rising temperature, water stress, etc). The best management option is adaptive silviculture, a forest management that favours natural regeneration resulting from free pollination among individuals identified as best adapted through the candidate gene method and GWAS. With the Life SySTEMiC project, we are applying the study of this combination of managements.
