Impacts of climate change on forest pests and diseases

Global warming is a significant scientific paradigm with potential consequences for agriculture and forestry. Climate change (CG) can impact agricultural zoning, crop productivity, and management techniques, altering the sector's current scenario, with serious economic, social, and environmental consequences. CG may also change the phytosanitary scenario, affecting the relative importance of pests and diseases, including the establishment of quarantine pests and pathogens. Opportunistic pests and pathogens, driven by plant stress, can cause increased damage. The potential impact of CG on forest pests and diseases includes space-time distribution, changes in chemical control (absorption, translocation, metabolism, residues, and degradation), biological control (host availability, temporal synchronization, distribution, thermal stress, and ecosystem interactions), genetic resistance, and physiological disturbances. Analyzing these impacts is crucial for adopting mitigating/adaptive measures to minimize damage. Key conclusions are the importance of predicting CG's impact on productivity despite uncertainty, anticipating problems for minimizing losses through adaptation, advancing multidisciplinary understanding of CG's impact on the forestry sector, acknowledging the transformative changes CG brings to forests, and fostering technology and industry unity. The forest sector faces a new era, requiring preparedness.