What if I told you that Iceland, a land known for glaciers, snowstorms, and volcanic fury, is quietly becoming a frontier in wildfire risk? It sounds contradictory. Yet, that’s exactly what we experienced during a two-and-a-half-day FoRISK wildfire workshop held from October 7 to 9, in Selfoss, southern Iceland. This training was hosted by the Icelandic Civil Protection, under the Technical Assistance Financing Facility (TAFF) of the European Commission’s Directorate General for European Civil Protection and Humanitarian Aid Operations (DG ECHO, the World Bank and the Global Facility for Disaster Reduction and Recovery (GFDRR).
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Extreme droughts are expected to increase in frequency and severity and together with rising temperatures weaken trees, threatening forest ecosystems and the services provided. Extensive…
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Climate change and its impacts on forest ecosystems, such as the increase of pests, poses a great threat to oaks. Fortunately, several ecological measures are available to improve oak vitality. Parasitoid insects, for example, are natural antagonists of leave-eating caterpillars and can help control forest pests. In the “Oak Resilience” project, the state agency Wald und Holz NRW investigated parasitoids in selected study areas in North-Rhine Westphalia
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Drought events are expected to be more frequent and more extreme in the forthcoming decades due to climate change. Already in the past decade we…
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Generally, it can be very challenging to communicate recent research advances in an understandable way to the public. To make it a bit sweeter, a bake challenge was held at the University Freiburg where participants were tasked with transforming PhD topics into appetizing creations. RESONATE researcher Julius Willig couldn’t resist the challenge and presented a cake with 2 forest management scenarios.
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This is a report made by three representatives from the International Forestry Students’ Association during their voluntary work for the HLPD 2023 organization.
On November 9, government representatives and practitioners from all over Europe came together in Berlin for the second FOREST EUROPE High-Level Talks to address one question: How can sustainable forest management help make Europe’s forests more resilient to the consequences of climate change?
For those who don’t know, FOREST EUROPE is a pan-European forest policy process at the ministerial level in which guidelines, criteria, and indicators of sustainable forest management are developed. And we had the opportunity to be the youth representatives.
What have we seen? What are the bullet points we, the Youth, take from this day full of panel discussions? This is our perspective on the topic of „growing healthier forests“ and the efforts the government representatives make in their countries.
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The FireWise communities are an inspiring example of good practices applied in the Mediterranean context that help us defend ourselves against the consequences of forest fires. These practices are being documented by the ResAlliance project to promote knowledge exchange across the region.
When a house, a garden, or private land burns down, it is not just property that burns. What goes away are the daily lives of entire families and communities, which subsequently have to try to get back on their feet with great difficulty and after a long time. All this happens every time a forest fire breaks out.
The European project ResAlliance is collecting good practices to improve land resilience in the context of the Mediterranean basin, especially those necessary to deal with the consequences of climate change, such as prolonged periods of drought and forest fires. These include those related to the increase in the number and intensity of forest fires, which are increasingly frequent and intense and with whose risk we must learn to live with now, not ‘tomorrow’.
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By Alberto Pauletto, FSC Italia
At the end of October 2018, tropical storm Vaia brought heavy rains and winds of up to 200 km/h to Northern Italy, killing 37 people and unleashing damage estimated at almost 5 billion euros. Vaia also affected parts of France, Croatia, Austria, and Switzerland, but Italy sustained the worst forestry destruction in its recent history, with more than 14 million trees felled. The Asiago Oltre Vaia project was an initiative of the Municipality of Asiago – with the support of numerous entities such as Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) Italia, Treedom, and the University of Padua – designed to draw lessons from the catastrophe to create more resistant and resilient forests for the future.
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Today forests are under increasing pressure: on one side society demands productivity and multipurpose use, while on the other side there’s increasing pressure from climatic extremes and intensification of forest disturbances.
We need constructive responses to these pressures like integrative forest management approaches and close-to-nature solutions to both enable the multipurpose value of our forest as well as to enhance their biodiversity and resilience in the face of climatic disruption. However, one of the main hurdles to enable new management systems is the general lack of knowledge and expertise on alternative management options available, and we have a solution for that!
ForestMoocForChange is a new and free online course providing an introduction to continues cover forestry, covering the various aspects of this innovative forestry approach over an 8-week period. The course includes numerous videos produced in the field by experts, managers and owners. Each week, a live meeting will be organised with the speakers enabling you to ask your questions and discuss the subject covered. From discovering how continuous cover works and its dynamics, to questions of an economic, ecological or social nature, the MOOC is designed to be comprehensive and aimed at everyone.
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It cannot be stressed enough: More than 100 participants from 22 countries gathered in the Polish forest to attend the SNEP (Association of Independent Firefighting…
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