Project description
Enhancing forest resilience under climate change
Climate change and escalating natural disturbances aggressively stress forest ecosystems, compromising their capacity to sequester carbon and deliver critical ecological benefits. Supported by the Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions programme, the DIS4MA project is designing a forest management system that combines detailed disturbance and management data with advanced simulation modelling to assess how different management strategies perform under future climate and disturbance scenarios. This will be tested on a regional scale in South Tyrol. The project is also working with local stakeholders to translate results into practical, participatory management guidelines. Overall, its goal is to ensure that forest management aligns with natural dynamics and enhances forest resilient to climate change.
Objective
Forests cover a third of the global land, provide vital ecosystem services, and sustain biodiversity. They play a pivotal role for climate mitigation as major carbon sinks, making them central to the EU Green Deal and international commitments under the Paris Agreement. Yet climate change and intensifying disturbance regimes threaten forest resilience. Forest management strategies aiming at enhancing resilience and adaptive capacity are therefore essential to sustain ecosystem services. A promising approach is to use natural disturbance characteristics as benchmarks for management. The Comparability Index (CI), a quantitative tool assessing the similarity between management and disturbance regimes, shows potential to assist such management, but has only been applied at the European scale; to become operational for managers, this tool must be downscaled. DIS4MA will downscale and spatialize CI to South Tyrol, a region in the Alps with detailed forest management plans and disturbance data. Using advanced simulation modelling, I will assess how CI-informed management affects ecosystem services under climate change and disturbance scenarios. To ensure the feasibility of the proposed management, I will engage with local stakeholders and develop participatory management guidelines. My expertise in disturbance ecology and management, combined with my supervisor’s strength in landscape modelling, represent a strong complementarity. South Tyrol’s data-rich context and EURAC’s interdisciplinary expertise in earth observation and stakeholder engagement make it the ideal setting. DIS4MA will boost my academic career, by broadening my skills and network, and benefit society by promoting resilient forests that secure ecosystem services and reduce disturbance-related costs. By combining various expertise and methods, DIS4MA will help bridge the gap between science and local stakeholders, integrating their preferences with model results into resilience-based management guidelines.
Fields of science (EuroSciVoc)
CORDIS classifies projects with EuroSciVoc, a multilingual taxonomy of fields of science, through a semi-automatic process based on NLP techniques. See: The European Science Vocabulary.
CORDIS classifies projects with EuroSciVoc, a multilingual taxonomy of fields of science, through a semi-automatic process based on NLP techniques. See: The European Science Vocabulary.
- natural sciences biological sciences ecology
- engineering and technology environmental engineering ecosystem-based management
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Keywords
Project’s keywords as indicated by the project coordinator. Not to be confused with the EuroSciVoc taxonomy (Fields of science)
Project’s keywords as indicated by the project coordinator. Not to be confused with the EuroSciVoc taxonomy (Fields of science)
Programme(s)
Multi-annual funding programmes that define the EU’s priorities for research and innovation.
Multi-annual funding programmes that define the EU’s priorities for research and innovation.
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HORIZON.1.2 - Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions (MSCA)
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Topic(s)
Calls for proposals are divided into topics. A topic defines a specific subject or area for which applicants can submit proposals. The description of a topic comprises its specific scope and the expected impact of the funded project.
Calls for proposals are divided into topics. A topic defines a specific subject or area for which applicants can submit proposals. The description of a topic comprises its specific scope and the expected impact of the funded project.
Funding Scheme
Funding scheme (or “Type of Action”) inside a programme with common features. It specifies: the scope of what is funded; the reimbursement rate; specific evaluation criteria to qualify for funding; and the use of simplified forms of costs like lump sums.
Funding scheme (or “Type of Action”) inside a programme with common features. It specifies: the scope of what is funded; the reimbursement rate; specific evaluation criteria to qualify for funding; and the use of simplified forms of costs like lump sums.
HORIZON-TMA-MSCA-PF-EF - HORIZON TMA MSCA Postdoctoral Fellowships - European Fellowships
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Call for proposal
Procedure for inviting applicants to submit project proposals, with the aim of receiving EU funding.
Procedure for inviting applicants to submit project proposals, with the aim of receiving EU funding.
(opens in new window) HORIZON-MSCA-2025-PF
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Net EU financial contribution. The sum of money that the participant receives, deducted by the EU contribution to its linked third party. It considers the distribution of the EU financial contribution between direct beneficiaries of the project and other types of participants, like third-party participants.
39100 Bolzano
Italy
The total costs incurred by this organisation to participate in the project, including direct and indirect costs. This amount is a subset of the overall project budget.