Models and decision support tools for integrated forest policy development under global change
The seminar ‘Models and decision support tools for integrated forest policy development under global change’ took place in February 18, 2016 in Lisbon, Portugal. It was organized by the School of Agriculture of the University of Lisbon and the Forest Sciences Centre of Catalonia and it was sponsored by IUFRO Unit 4.04.04. This seminar was organized in the framework of the project ‘SuFoRun’, supported by a Marie Skodowska-Curie Research and Innovation Staff Exchange (RISE) within the H2020 work programme (H2020-MSCA-RISE-2015) under grant agreement No 691149. SuFoRun focuses on forestry and climate change interactions, including the development of adaptive forest management tools.
The seminar involved 45 participants from 14 countries in Europe, Africa, America and Asia. Its program encompassed presentations from research institutions in the SuFoRUn consortium which includes the Forest Sciences Centre of Catalonia and the Technical University of Madrid in Spain, the School of Agriculture of the University of Lisbon in Portugal, the University of Eastern Finland, the Swedish University of Life Sciences, the University of Freiburg in Germany, the Pontifica Catholic University of Chile an the University of Chile, the Pacific Northwest Research Station, the University of Washington and the Pennsylvania State University in the USA, the University of S. Paulo in Brazil and the Centro agronómico tropical de investigación y enseñanza in Costa Rica. The first part of the seminar focused on the characterization of the state-of-the-art in forest ecosystem management in SuFoRun partner institutions while the second part addressed specific ongoing research and potential synergies with the exchange program.
The seminar fulfilled its objectives. It provided a forum that facilitated the exchange needed to advance the knowledge about forest ecosystem management. It worked well as a venue to convey to students and early stage researchers the open problems that require further study and research in the key areas to be addressed by this exchange program. These encompass a) forest modeling to acquire knowledge about forest ecosystem dynamics and disturbance (biotic and abiotic) regimes, b) development of forest management planning methods to estimate ecosystem services supply, to assess risks and to produce trade-off information and c) development of intelligent ecosystem management decision support systems as technological platforms needed to implement models and methods and comunicate information to stakeholders. A workshop and a conference are to be organized in the USA in 2017 to further strengthen research collaboration in these scientific areas and to promote dissemination activities.
