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Tag: resilience

How forest owners can guarantee an income in times of uncertainty 

How forest owners can guarantee an income in times of uncertainty 

Published September 14, 2023 by Sara Uzquiano

What I learned about the challenges for German forests and their owners, about future-oriented management and collaboration between forest science and practice when exploring the Hatzfeldt-Wildenburg county with my EFI Bonn team 

It is only a few months since I joined EFI, but of course, I have known the institution for a long time. And I must confess that I have always loved its catchy slogan: “Connecting Knowledge to action”. Thus, since I started working here, I have been looking forward to meeting and congratulating whoever would have created such an inspiring sentence. But recently I have found out that this slogan just simple and merely defines what we do at EFI, and I am going to tell you why.   

On Tuesday 22nd. August, we had our annual “Day out”, where EFI Bonn goes to the forest and discusses practical forest-related issues. We visited a forest located only one hour and a half Northeast of the city of Bonn, in the Northeastern part of Rhineland-Palatinate. It was not my first time visiting a German forest, but it was my first time seeing a German forest through the eyes of local practitioners.

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Why Integrative Forest Management requires integrative solutionsDiscussions in the forest

Why Integrative Forest Management requires integrative solutions

Published September 7, 2023 by Silvester Boonen

In times of climate change and related global challenges, forests are both under threat and considered important allies to mitigate climate change. Demand for our forests is accordingly high, so we ask ourselves: Could Integrative Forest Management – a management method that integrates several forest ecosystem services – serve as one of the solutions? And if yes – how can we make all stakeholders concerned with forests part of this solution? What role does effective communication play in this? With the webinar “Integrative Forest Management requires integrative solutions” on 4th July organized by the Integrate Network, and hosted by the current Integrate chair, Michel Leytem (Luxembourg), we aimed at a solution-oriented discussion on tested methods and best practice approaches for overcoming silos and integrating the wide range of interests in forest ecosystems. Our panelists were Dr. Susanne Winter (WWF), Teresa Baiges (Centre de la Propietat Forestal, Catalonia), Sabrina Dietz (FACE), and Giovanni Santopuoli (Unimol). The panel was moderated by Jakob Derks (WUR, Landmax).

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Community of practice: an inclusive Good Governance System in the Mediterranean area

Community of practice: an inclusive Good Governance System in the Mediterranean area

Published September 4, 2023 by ResAlliance

Communities of practice (CoP) are fundamental tools to build resilience and increase knowledge sharing: this is how the ResAlliance project intends to use this potential.…

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Take a walk in the Saxon forest…

Take a walk in the Saxon forest…

Published August 29, 2023 by Cornelius Oertel

…and discover forest soil test experiments!

In the Eisenstraßenmoor in Saxony, Germany, forest visitors now have access to information about peatlands and can discover one of the H2020 HoliSoils project sites. “The Eisenstraßenmoor used to be a drained bog. This means that centuries ago, the foresters simply drained the water and directed it away from the bog to make the area suitable for tree growth and timber production” , says Clemens Weiser, head of the local forest enterprise. “This deteriorated the condition of the bog, causing the entire peat body to decay. As a result, significant CO2 emissions occurred due to the dryness, similar to how a compost pile at home decomposes.” Clemens and HoliSoils partner Cornelius Oertel and his team from The Thünen Institute for Forest Ecosystems want to reverse this process as part of their activities in the project .

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„Parasitoide spielen eine wesentliche Rolle in Waldökosystemen“ Foto der zu mehreren an einer Wirtsraupe parasitierenden Larven der Erzwespe Eulopus lavarum

„Parasitoide spielen eine wesentliche Rolle in Waldökosystemen“ 

Published August 10, 2023 by Gesche Schifferdecker

Interview mit Axel Schopf zur Erforschung natürlicher Gegenspieler von Forstschädlingen

 Darüber habe ich mit Axel Schopf, Professor i.R. an der Universität für Bodenkultur in Wien und Berater  in dem Team des Eichenresilienz-Projekt gesprochen, in dem European Forest Institute mit dem Landesbetrieb Wald und Holz im Wissenstransfer zusammenarbeitet.

Die Durchführung des Projektes „Erhebung der Parasitoiden der Frostspanner-Arten Operophtera brumata und Erannis defoliaria sowie des Eichenwicklers Tortrix viridana“ erfolgt am Institut für Forstentomologie, Forstpathologie und Forstschutz (IFFF) an der BOKU Wien unter der Leitung von Frau Doz. Dr. Christa Schafellner. Ihre Aufgabe war, den Parasitoidenkomplex (Parasitoide = Raubparasiten, die als natürliche Gegenspieler von Schädlingen diese letztlich abtöten) der dominierenden Eichenschädlinge Kleiner und Großer Frostspanner (Operophtera brumata, Erannis defoliaria) und Grüner Eichenwickler (Tortrix viridana) in ausgewählten Eichenbeständen im Münsterland zu untersuchen. Ziel der Untersuchung war es, in Folge die Möglichkeit einer Steigerung der Widerstandsfähigkeit von Eichenwäldern durch bestimmte Förderung und Ausbringung von natürlichen Gegenspielern der Eichenschädlinge zu bewirken.

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Re-inventing the wheel or shaping agriculture and forest resilience exchange instead?

Re-inventing the wheel or shaping agriculture and forest resilience exchange instead?

Published July 18, 2023 by ResAlliance

Despite the continued funding of scientific projects, new knowledge, innovative ideas and methods from practice are not sufficiently captured and spread. The research findings are often not integrated into agricultural and forestry practice. 

Let’s imagine that there was no exchange of knowledge between countries. Every nation would be forced to reinvent the wheel, on its own, when someone, elsewhere, had already done so. You may think that this situation is not possible in the interconnected 21st century but, for some types of knowledge, this is still the case. 

The publication and dissemination of scientific articles in scientific journals is a well-trodden path. A few global printing houses offer worldwide access to discoveries and innovations described according to scientific thinking, and in English: the global scientific language. However, knowledge and innovation do not belong exclusively to scientists. Thousands of practitioners, managers, policy makers or teachers innovate in their daily professional lives. With a bit of luck, these innovations are not only applied, but also published in a report or a factsheet, or conveyed to colleagues from the same region or country at technical conferences, field visits, or regional or national congresses (all in the local language). And they don’t go further, as in most cases their creators do not have the mandate to disseminate them internationally. 

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Fuelling the Forest Fire Policy – From the groundwork to an international audience

Fuelling the Forest Fire Policy – From the groundwork to an international audience

Published July 10, 2023 by Maria Schlossmacher

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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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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Forest fires, field recorders, and four females 

Forest fires, field recorders, and four females 

Published March 8, 2023 by Sara Uzquiano

It is Monday, 6 am. My Colleague Patricia and I (working for Land Life Company) are leaving our office in Burgos heading to Ribera de Folgoso (León), where our SUPERB colleagues from CESEFOR Judit and Rocio are waiting for us. Today we will accompany them to collect and place again field recorders in the plots of our Spanish SUPERB demo in Castilla/León. 

Within the SUPERB project, we have 12 Demo-areas across Europe. In our Spanish demo we amongst other activities investigate degraded areas after a recent wildfire, and look at different states of forest recovery. In this regard, the aim of the field recorders is to identify different bird and bat species present across all these different recovery levels. Birds and bats play a very important role in many habitats as pollinators, insect controllers, dispersers, “reforesters” by regurgitating, defecating, or burying seeds, and they help the tree to “awake” the seed as it passes through their digestive system. Finally, they are of course indicators of biodiversity. Thus, their presence, or absence, can tell us a lot about the state of our forest.  

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