CoP ForestDSS News June 2014

20
Jun
06.20.2014 |
hvacik
Harald Vacik's picture
This is the second newsletter of the Community of Practice (CoP) on Forest Management Decision Support Systems. We would like to update you on the recent developments in the CoP:

Working Committee Meeting of CoP On the 11th of June 2014 the last meeting of the Working Committee of the ForestDSS Community of Practice (CoP) took place. It was possible to review the activities of the different working groups and update the plans for the scheduled activities. It was agreed that all members should be more actively involved in the actions – therefore the work plans and the members of the Working Committee are now available via the website: workgroups . Please contact the responsible Working Committee members in case that you want to be engaged in the collaborative work on a scientific publication or are able to contribute to the overall objectives of the group.

Call for papers in “Forests” The deadline for the submission of contributions for the Special Issue in the scientific journal “Forests” was post phoned to the end of June 2014. So it is still possible for a limited number of authors to submit their interest in participating. The SI will provide an overview regarding how Decision Support Systems (DSS) are currently designed and applied for the sustained provision of ecosystem services within the context of climate change. The issue will include overviews on models, methods, techniques, and frameworks. The deadline for the submission of your full paper is November 2014. So in case that you have an interest to contribute with your scientific work to the SI then please let us (harald.vacik@boku.ac.at) know by e-mail until end of June 2014 about you interest, by sending an abstract and title. For more details on the call for the Special issue please check out: the call.

Council Meeting at the Conference Implementation of DSS Tools into the Forestry Practice The Technical University in Zvolen and the University of Lisbon organizes the Second International Scientific Conference on Implementation of DSS Tools into the Forestry Practice from 18-20.09.2014 in Zvolen, Slovakia. The conference will focus on topics related to uncertainty, risk and the human dimension in adaptive forest management and under climate change. The CoP will organize a Council Meeting as a side event of the conference, where we welcome members of the CoP and participants of the conference warmly. Based on the latest informations the deadline for the submission of abstracts has been extended to end of June 2014 – so it is still possible to submit your contributions and present your research on DSS: call for papers .

Forestdss.org website and new members In the last months since the launch of the Community of Practice Website we had also a couple of new members that joined the CoP. Bart Muys from the Forest Ecology and Management Research Group and Floris Dalemans from the Division of Forest, Nature and Landscape (FNL) at KU Leuven, Reza Pourmoayed from the Department of Economics and Business at Aarhus University and Rivas-Portillo from the Technical University of Madrid among others. We are happy about their involvement and warmly welcome the new members! 90 members are currently registered ( search for users.) Please check out the website for announcements via the news and events pages or follow the latest discussions at the community pages.

New publications The list of publications is steadily growing and allows a good overview about forest DSS related papers . The most recent papers of members of the CoP are always highlighted on the main page of the CoP. You might have an interest to check them out – for instance the book published by Reynolds et al. (2014) in Springer or the paper by Segura et al. (2014) in Computers and Electronics in Agriculture on Decision support systems for forest management: A comparative analysis and assessment.

Upcoming conferences and meetings There are several meetings scheduled this year, which would allow the members of the CoP to meet physically in a council meeting as a side event of the planned conferences. At least three options are listed below, where the members of the CoP are warmly welcomed to participate: The IFORS conference will be held from 13-18 July 2014 in the city of Barcelona, Spain. The Second International Scientific Conference on Implementation of DSS Tools into the Forestry Practice from 18-20.09.2014 in Zvolen, Slovakia The 24th IUFRO World Congress in Salt Lake City, Utah, USA in October 5-11, 2014 where the CoP will organize the session "Providing Ecosystem Services under Climate Change - Community of Practice of Forest Decision Support Systems" and will have a business meeting (6.10.2014) in collaboration with the IUFRO group 4.03.03 (Information management and information technologies) at the congress.