Europe and Canada translate research into innovative forest management and planning
One of the EU’s research objectives for 2020 is to build resilient forestry systems to ensure the supply of biomaterials in a sustainable and resource-efficient way without compromising natural resources. This is a major challenge in the Mediterranean, which is particularly vulnerable to the negative impact of global changes. Strategic partnerships beyond Europe are needed to advance forestry research in mitigating the effects of global changes. The EU-funded NEWFORESTS project analysed the responses of forest ecosystems to global changes, and integrated current knowledge on innovative forest management and planning approaches. The joint exchange programme brought together 67 experienced and early-stage researchers, totalling 104 secondments and 235 person-months. Over 100 secondments were implemented to and from Canadian and European institutions, centres and universities. Work on carbon fluxes in forests related to disturbances suggests that new forests have been playing an important role in counterbalancing the carbon emissions in recent decades. Findings show that diversity did not offer any protection against the negative effect of climate anomalies where those existed. Moreover, biomass offsets little or no permafrost carbon release from soils, streams and wildfire. An analysis of plant diversity temporal trends using fossil pollen records from the North American boreal forest biome revealed that the western and eastern North American boreal forests experienced different diversity dynamics. Disturbance dynamics research produced notable scientific achievements concerning the main drivers of fire dynamics in Mediterranean and boreal forests. It also resulted in the development of new methodologies to explain historic fire regimes. Researchers specified how a complex, adaptive system approach is a suitable alternative in providing ecosystem-based evidence to help guide forest management in systems affected by global changes. Other findings show that the thermal migration distance and the occurrence of extreme cold events have strong effects on translocated species’ responses. NEWFORESTS contributed to understanding how forests respond to environmental changes, and how societies can implement such knowledge in managing and planning forest landscapes to deliver sustainable ecosystem services and goods.
Keywords
Canada, forest management, global changes, NEWFORESTS, boreal forest