Horizon 2020 HORIZON-CL6-2022-CLIMATE-01 (Land, ocean and water for climate action)
HORIZON-CL6-2022-CLIMATE-01-05 grant agreement ID 101084481
Project partners are SLU (leading partner), EFI, University of Florence, University of Molise, Swiss Federal Institute for Forest, Snow and Landscape Research WSL, Johann Heinrich von Thünen Institute, Helmholtz Geo-Research Centre Potsdam, Wageningen University, Stichting Wageningen Research, Forest Research, LSFRI "Silava", ICONS, Bangor University, Luke, Enviromental Social Science Research Group, University of Natural Resources and Life Sciences BOKU, Lunda University, Prospex Institute and Research Institute for Nature and Forest INBO.
Projext duration is 60 months.
FORWARDS will prototype The ForestWard Observatory to provide (a) timely and detailed information on European forests’ vulnerability to climate change impacts, (b) science-based knowledge to guide management using the principles of climate-smart forestry, ecosystem restoration, and biodiversity preservation (CSF & Restoration), and (c) stakeholder engagement and public participation in decision-making processes. We capitalize on data from existing networks (e.g. ICP Forests) and expand this with a Network of Pilot sites through 5 FORWARDS Demo cases plus ~50 trials established via grants to third parties. We will reconcile the current divide between forest information obtained from the ground and remote sensing by incorporating the concept of Monitoring Supersites and novel approaches to more comprehensively characterize cause-effect relationships of forest disturbances. Tools for European-wide forwardlooking and spatially explicit projections on forests as well as regionalized CSF & Restoration trajectories will be developed jointly with stakeholders to evaluate synergies and trade-offs of conversion and restoration activities. These will be used to provide good practice guidance on effective CSF & Restoration management practices. The ForestWard Observatory will be constructed under the principle of co-design to address the information needs by users and stakeholders. FORWARDS interacts with several established networks on CSF & Restoration and effectively utilizes five dedicated grant calls to implement forest observations and test CSF & restoration measures. The ambition is for The ForestWard Observatory to become a long-lasting legacy of FORWARDS, which supports decision making across scales to boost the uptake of good CSF & Restoration management practice throughout Europe (local scale for management practice), while efficiently informing about climate change and disturbance impacts and resilience of European forests (regional to EU scale for policy making).
Keywords: Forestry; Empirical social research; Political sociology; Environmental sociology; Policy analysis; Forest adaptation to climate change; Carbon sequestration in forest ; Long-term forest monitoring; Public participation; Social and behavioural science; Forest ecosystem services; Forest resilience