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Category: Integrated Forest Management

Connecting nature conservation and forest managementLively discussions amongst participants during a training exercise in the marteloscope Jägerhäuschen in the Kottenforst.

Connecting nature conservation and forest management

Published May 31, 2023 by Silvester Boonen

Why the best exchange of knowledge&experiences about forests usually happens in the forest

Have you ever heard of the ADAPT Project, a project implemented by IUCN to increase ecosystem and community resilience to climate change and disaster risks by applying Nature-based solutions in the Western Balkans? I in fact haven’t, until recently I met some of the project partners when the Regional Office for Eastern Europe and Central Asia (ECARO) of IUCN (International Union for Conservation of Nature and Natural Resources) organized in collaboration with diverse partners and country representatives from the Balkan region a four-day study tour to Bonn. The tour had the goal to exchange experiences and knowledge of nature-based solutions that may find application to the Western Balkan region.    

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Integrative forest management requires integrative solutions

Integrative forest management requires integrative solutions

Published May 24, 2023 by Gabriela Rueda

Good practices for engaging different perspectives on forests. Register now for the next Integrate Webinar!

How can we manage our forests in the best way – both beneficial for nature and people? How can we integrate different forest functions and ecosystem services, and address trade-offs in forest management? What can we do to improve the communication and knowledge exchange between stakeholders who have “skin in the game” and potentially conflicting interests?

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Managing your forest or not? Find out with the INFORMA Forest Management PlatformComparison of managed and unmanaged forest patches in the Woods of Brabant, in Belgium

Managing your forest or not? Find out with the INFORMA Forest Management Platform

Published March 21, 2023 by Jonas Simons

By Jonas Simons and Bart Muys (KU Leuven)

Imagine you are responsible for a large, forested area in Europe. Will you manage it, or let nature run its course? If you decide to manage your forest, what would be the consequences? Would it store more carbon? Would it use its resources more efficiently, or produce more wood? What about biodiversity conservation? Would the unmanaged choice have more bird species? Another factor to consider is the frequency of disturbance events, such as fires and windstorms, which is increasing due to climate change. Since you will want to keep the resilience of your forest high, which management option would contribute better to this goal?

Unfortunately, current research answers these questions ambiguously. The relationships between the management of forests, provisioning of several ecosystem services and resilience to disturbances remain rather unclear. In addition, several of the ecosystem services we expect from forests have trade-offs between each other. The bottom line is: before deciding what to do with your forest, you should know your viable management options (including the decision to not manage), and which consequences different implementation options have on how your forest functions. In Work Package 2 (WP2) of INFORMA, led by KU Leuven, we will investigate this knowledge gap. To do so, we are developing the INFORMA Forest Management Platform: a new, large database that is specifically designed to answer management-related questions for European forests. 

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Re-spiritualizing forests… What in heaven does this mean?!

Re-spiritualizing forests… What in heaven does this mean?!

Published February 10, 2023 by Jeanne Roux

“In the forests are things you could lie in the moss for years pondering about.” (Franz Kafka) 

With this quotation from a famous local poet, we started our SINCERE project workshop in 2019 in the city of Prague. Experts and enthusiasts of spiritual and cultural values of forests from across Europe and Asia came together for three days to discuss how the “spiritual values of forests” have been relevant in the past as well as the present.  

The result is an exploratory study, based on knowledge from 18 inter-disciplinary experts including natural and social scientists, recently published in Ecology & Society. Funeral forests, forest therapy, and forest bathing: these are all “new” trends, especially in Europe. What is the spiritual fuss over forests about? That’s what we wanted to find out! 

But this spiritual interest in forests is not new at all. Humans have had a close relationship with forests and have been intrigued by their magical nature since forever. Societies depended on forests also for their spiritual development, e.g., sacred natural sites (sacred groves), of which some still exist today. We also know that forests and trees are often central in myths and folklore – thinking about the Brothers Grimm fairytales, but also myths including the mystical and magical power of certain tree species such as the oak…. (and again, even in art and films today such as Lord of the Ring’s Treebeard character and Avatar). 

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Welche Wälder wollen wir? Neues Martelkom-Projekt nutzt Marteloskope zur Erforschung von Waldwahrnehmung

Welche Wälder wollen wir? Neues Martelkom-Projekt nutzt Marteloskope zur Erforschung von Waldwahrnehmung

Published January 12, 2023 by Katharina Freund

Wenn Sie einen Waldspaziergang machen, um sich zu erholen – in welchen Wald gehen Sie dann? Wie sieht dieser Wald aus? Fühlen Sie sich wohl unter Nadelbäumen, mögen Sie lieber Eichen und Buchen oder vielleicht einen Mix aus beiden? Wie stellen Sie sich einen attraktiven Wald vor, und was wäre das Gegenteil davon? Die Antworten auf diese Fragen sind vermutlich von vielen verschiedenen Faktoren abhängig: von Ihrem Alter, Ihrem Beruf, und wo Sie leben, aber auch von Ihren Einstellungen und Werten zum Wald. Vielleicht erkennen Sie einzelne Baumarten oder Pflanzen, wenn Sie im Wald pausieren, oder beobachten sogar Vögel und andere Waldtiere? Und hatten Sie jemals Berührungspunkte mit der Forstwirtschaft – oder fragen Sie sich, warum Wälder überhaupt bewirtschaftet werden? 

Mit dem neuen Forschungsprojekt Martelkom (Marteloskope als Forschungs- und Kommunikationsinstrument für integrative Waldwirtschaft) wollen wir vom European Forest Institute (EFI) und der Forstlichen Versuchs- und Forschungsanstalt Baden-Württemberg (FVA) genau diese Fragen erforschen: Wie werden der Wald und die Forstwirtschaft von verschiedenen gesellschaftlichen Gruppen wahrgenommen und welche Art von Wald bevorzugen diese Gruppen? Unser Ziel ist es auch in Zusammenarbeit mit regionalen Forstverbänden in Arnsberg, Bonn und Freiburg zu untersuchen, welche Vorkenntnisse, Werte und Einstellungen mit verschiedenen Eigenschaften von Wald verbunden sind, und ob und in welchem Umfang sich diese ändern, wenn Laien sich mit Waldbewirtschaftung auseinandersetzen. 

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“Imagine there’s a forest” – inspirations from Francis Hallé

“Imagine there’s a forest” – inspirations from Francis Hallé

Published December 13, 2022 by Jakob Derks

Humans originate from arboreal primates, so to really understand the forest, you have to experience it from the canopy. This is what the famous French botanist and conservationist Francis Hallé believes. Despite his respectable age, the spry octogenarian had no issues demonstrating his capability to do so on the tree top path next the biosphere centre in the Pfälzerwald.

Located on the French border, in the middle of the largest contiguous forest in Germany, this centre is the location of the Wasgauer Gespräche/les entretiens du Wasgau. Every second year, this bilingual event brings together people from the French and the German sides of the border to talk about various nature-related topics. This year’s question was: how much nature do humans need? Speaking on behalf of EFI and the Integrate network, I was the only presenter to talk about the pragmatic need for wood, and how integrative forest management can be a solution for providing needed draw materials while also conserving biodiversity. This however does not mean that it is the best solution everywhere. In some places a more intensive management style makes sense, while in others the wise option is to leave nature to itself. And this is exactly the case made by Francis Hallé during the opening session of the event.

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8th Annual Integrate Network Meeting: Looking for common approaches for multifunctional forests in Europe

8th Annual Integrate Network Meeting: Looking for common approaches for multifunctional forests in Europe

Published December 5, 2022 by Maria Schlossmacher

A great asset of an European-wide network, such as the Integrate Network, is to regularly meet and exchange with many interesting colleagues from across Europe on a wide range of highly relevant forest-related topics and issues! Especially rewarding is to visit Integrate Network members in their home countries and get in-depth insight to forests, their management, and related challenges and opportunities. Recently, the current chair of the Integrate Network, Spain, invited the Member Countries and interested participants to gather for the 8th Annual Integrate Meeting in Madrid. In the tradition of meeting in fall, between October 19-21 around 40 participants discussed relevant developments of the Integrate Network and voted on important next steps; shared experiences on forest management approaches in the Mediterranean and went on an excursion to the Valsaín forests where they learned on how the tool of demonstration sites is being applied in education and training for main management challenges.

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How can the EU double its forests’ climate change mitigation impact by 2050? New Horizon Europe project INFORMA to provide answers

How can the EU double its forests’ climate change mitigation impact by 2050? New Horizon Europe project INFORMA to provide answers

Published November 14, 2022 by Priscila Jordão

Forests can act as carbon sinks or emitters, as made clear by this summer’s catastrophic forest fires that ravaged southwestern France and the Iberian Peninsula. The devastating events following August’s record heatwave resulted in Europe’s highest wildfire emissions in 15 years. Only in the region of Valencia, Spain, the fires released more than 1 million tons of CO2 into the atmosphere, equivalent to the annual emissions of all private cars in the three capital cities of the province: Castellón, Valencia and Alicante.

Although climate change played a major role in the catastrophe, the fires were aggravated by rural exodus, which led to the abandonment of forest management in the area and to the accumulation of flammable vegetation, explains José Vicente Oliver, professor at the Polytechnic University of Valencia (UPV).

In cooperation with EFI, Oliver and his team are looking for ways to prepare the EU’s forests for future climate scenarios and realise their full carbon absorption potential by mainstreaming Sustainable Forest Management (SFM) into more conventional management practices. In the new Horizon Europe project INFORMA, EFI, UPV and other partners are tackling crucial questions around SFM that remain partially unanswered by science, unaddressed by policies and unexplored by most carbon offsetting schemes. How can we manage existing forests in different European biogeographic regions for enhanced carbon capture while ensuring the provision of other ecosystem services such as biodiversity conservation and wood production? Where and how should we grow new forests, and which species should be used? How can we adapt and increase forests’ resilience to more frequent disturbances such as drought, fires, windstorms and pests?

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