This workshop, “Living with storms – towards resilience and adaptation to forest disturbances,” is part of FOREST EUROPE’s work towards the implementation of a pan-European Forest Risk Facility (FoRISK) to support forest adaptation to changing climatic and site conditions as well as to enhance the resilience and mitigation potential of forests at a pan-European level. For further details and material, please also visit FoRISK’s website.

During the workshop, experts from 15 countries had the chance to become part of a network, establish strong partnerships across pan-Europe that will help to prevent and better control future disturbances caused by storm events.

Lessons learned: How to mitigate windstorm damage on European forests?

While windstorms are rare events, damage caused by storms occurs suddenly and is measured by the volume of damaged timber; storms are considered the most devastating disturbance factor for forests.

Compared to most other risk factors in the forest, large-scale windthrows and wind breakages also have some special characteristics:

• Windstorms not only create highly concentrated accumulations of large volumes of wood but also represent a high risk of injury and accidents for forest workers.
• In addition, the effects of storms often extend beyond the forested areas and can also impair infrastructure (roads and energy supply) and, therefore, require close coordination with civil protection measures.
• Since windstorms are rare and rarely hit the same region twice (fortunately), experience and empirical knowledge may be missing in such situations.

Some of the solutions presented include:

• Mitigating the risk for storm damage in forests by proactive sustainable forest management and improving forest resilience, including e.g., promoting mixed forest stands, improving individual (needle) tree stability by thinning measures, or active top height limitation.
• Development of comprehensive national and regional crisis management plans, including measures for prevention, preparedness, response and recovery, and creating the legal framework for implementing these concepts already before the next storm event.
• Inclusive stakeholder dialogue to raise awareness and create acceptance for storm adaptive measures in forest management.
• Asking for help by establishing and maintaining long-term cooperation across country borders and regions.

For more detailed recommendations, read here our policy brief on the topic.

Building a vision for cooperation and networking in the field of risk and crisis management across Europe:

It cannot be stressed enough that extreme weather events will inevitably become more frequent and severe in the near future due to climate change. As a consequence the damage in Europe’s forests will exacerbate with a negative impact on the economy, society, for the environment, and nature. Therefore, already today, policy and practice have to prepare for these uncertainties in future forests and adapt management strategies.

Climate change will lead to new, unprecedented damage situations or cause damage in yet unaffected areas and disturbances will not halt at country borders. Networking across countries will be of even greater importance for crisis management. However, today still numerous information and collaboration gaps exist across borders but also between forest-related sectors, e.g., at the science-policy-practice interface. During the workshop, success factors at national and international levels have been identified to overcome these gaps.

At national level, it all starts with the definition of a common goal across sectors and the identification and involvement of all relevant actors and stakeholders (individuals or organizations). This also includes the development of communication strategies tailored to the specific needs of different actors. Shared leadership will secure a strong sense of co-responsibility. At international level, regular engagement in cooperation is needed to maintain contacts and renew networks also at times of no crisis. Structural stability and long-term solutions are necessary for effective and efficient pan-European disaster risk management.

For a more detailed analysis of the success factors, read our policy brief on the topic (soon available).

A future FoRISK could fulfill these tasks and would oversee events and developments of regional, national and pan-European importance, keep information flowing, act as a first entry point for new and existing partners and connect the networks at national and pan-European levels. The signatories and observers of FOREST EUROPE strongly support the full-scale launch of the Forest Risk Facility during the 9th Ministerial Conference in Bonn in 2024. Currently, a Ministerial decision for the set-up of FoRISK and a technical annex describing the Terms of Reference of FoRISK, including the future working modalities (administrative set-up and funding structure) in more detail, are under development.

From FOREST EUROPE, we would like to thank all participants, co-organizers, and all involved speakers for their support and valuable insights provided.

The post Living with windstorms in pan-European forests first appeared on FOREST EUROPE.

This event has been created to react to emerging issues related to forests and the forest-based sector. The HLPD is an open and informal dialogue that provides a space to promote synergies in the pan-European region and beyond. Ministers (Cem Özdemir, German Federal Minister of Food and Agriculture will give a welcome speech), General Directors (e.g., María Jesús Rodríguez de Sancho from Spain, Michael Reinhard from Switzerland), other national representatives (e.g., Stefanie Schmitz from DG Environment representative), as well as high-level representatives of observer countries and organizations (e.g., Juha Niemela EUSTAFOR President, Technische Universität München, Boris Erg, Director of IUCN European Regional Office), will be present in Berlin and will be brought together with the online audience to discuss and learn from each other.

This platform will be an essential milestone for preparing the FOREST EUROPE 9^th Ministerial Conference in 2024 and ministerial documents.

The event will have two consecutive panel discussions where director generals and other participants can interact directly with high-level speakers. To set the scene, renowned scientists will present a science-policy brief and summarize the state of the art in research.

High-level international speakers will have the space to present their experiences and national examples of Sustainable Forest Management and resilience in forests from an environmental, social, and economic perspective. There will be space for interaction with the participants in Berlin and the online audience on both panels.

Stay tuned and check all the details on the event website

The post Growing Healthier Forests: How can Sustainable Forest Management enhance resilience? first appeared on FOREST EUROPE.

Therefore, FOREST EUROPE recently organized a three-day workshop on “Managing biotic threats in forests – lessons learned from bark beetle calamities” (see programme here) in Breznice, Czech Republic, jointly with the Ministry of Agriculture of the Czech Republic, the Forest Management Institute (UHUL), and the Forestry and Game Management Research Institute of the Czech Republic (FGMRI). This event is part of FOREST EUROPE’S work toward the establishment of a pan-European Forest Risk Facility (FoRISK).

During the workshop, experts from 16 countries gathered to exchange good and bad experiences of bark beetle management in Europe, aiming to prevent and better prepare for future outbreaks of bark beetles and other biotic threats.

Different countries are facing different challenges:

In the first session, insights from the UK (Max Blake, Forest Research – Alice Holt Lodge UK) gave an idea on the ability of spruce bark beetles to spread over distances of 300-400 km, being blown over from outbreak areas in Belgium and France to the south-east of England. Spruce bark beetles are a non-native forest pest in the UK, and strict eradication protocols apply if an outbreak of this invasive species is detected. Gernot Hoch (BfW Austrian Research Centre for Forests) presented on the new and unexpected developments of spruce bark beetle outbreaks in natural spruce forests at higher elevations in Austria. Recently, higher temperatures have allowed for two beetle generation and population dynamics of unusual intensity also at higher elevations. The cooler climate in Finland and Norway has yet prevented the establishment of large-scale breeding populations of the spruce bark beetle, as presented by Tiina Ylioja (Luke – Natural Resources Institute Finland) and Paal Krokene (NiBio – Norwegian Institute of Bioeconomy Research). But also, these northern countries are preparing for more intense outbreak seasons due to increasing temperatures and are running national monitoring programs and setting-up preparedness plans. For some countries, the worst is likely still ahead, and we need more workshops connecting countries with different levels of experience and fostering cooperation.

Participants from Bulgaria (Petya Dimitrova-Mateva, Executive Forest Agency Bulgaria), Ukraine (Kateryna Davydenko, Ukrainian Research Institute of Forestry & Forest Melioration), and from the Czech Republic (Jan Lubojacký, Forestry, and Game Management Research Institute Czech Republic) also presented on bark beetle damages in pine forests. It is important for any management guideline to consider that different biotic and abiotic disturbance agents can also interact and result in further weakened tree stands. Bark beetle gaps in forest stands could create vulnerable edges that could also have cascading impacts, i.e., further facilitate the risk of increased wind disturbance.

Disturbances are interrelated and disturbance management has to consider the whole risk cycle:

The next session continued in this direction but also provided guidance for forest management in an uncertain future. Interrelations with other forest disturbances are possible at any time during a bark beetle outbreak – before (predisposition because of recent storm or drought events), during, or after (potentially flammable material of dead wood increasing the risk for fire). Eventually, one has to remember that after the disturbance is before the next disturbance, as Marcus Lindner (EFI Bonn) also reminded the participants during his presentation. He also highlighted that disturbance risk management should consider the full disaster risk management cycle with proactive and reactive management measures for prevention, preparedness, response, and recovery.

Marcus Lindner from the European Forest Institute.

The same rules apply for disturbances due to extreme climatic events, as participants learned in the presentation of Nenad Petrovic (University of Belgrade) on the severe damages of the Ice Break event in Serbia in 2014 and the regeneration process after almost ten years. Forest management strategies that ignore the uncertainties associated with climate change are unlikely to meet future expectations. Restoration of post-calamity areas was also the topic of Jan Leugner’s (Forestry and Game Management Research Institute Czech Republic) presentation. Large areas of bark beetle calamities often result in large areas of thickets (young forest stands) in the next decade from planting or natural regeneration of trees. Dissemination of new knowledge and experiences is of the utmost importance to avoid loss of species admixtures, loss of stability, and overall functionality of the ecosystems of the next forest generation.

Subsequently, the participants were introduced to the policy brief “Managing bark beetle outbreaks in the 21st Century” by the author Tomas Hlasny (Czech University of Life Sciences in Prague). This short and concise brief with recommendations for policymakers emphasizes that resilience thinking when adopted in policy and management frameworks, will help deal with increasing risks and enable us to see natural disturbances also as opportunities for creating new, resilient forests to adapt and recover from future shocks more efficiently. The policy brief also comes with a toolbox addressing the full disaster risk management cycle that can be directly implemented in national crisis plans. (Policy brief and a short summary video on the policy brief will be available soon).

In the afternoon of the second day, a field trip was organized for the participants in the southwestern Brdy Mountains with demonstrations of forest sites in the state and privately owned forests affected by spruce bark beetles at large-scale and measures taken to deal with the damage and for restoration explained. It was organized in cooperation with the Military Forests and Estates of the Czech Republic and the Forest Administration of the Archbishopric of Prague.

Risk management for forest disturbances: what is needed – towards FoRISK and international cooperation

During the last day, participants had a chance to learn about the activities of FAO on the management of bark beetle outbreaks from a global perspective by Shiroma Sathyapala (FAO), the initiative to establish a nationwide forest damage database in cooperation with the federal states in Germany at the new Institute for Forest Protection and the vision to extend it to pan-Europe by Henrik Hartmann ( Julius Kuehn-Institute for Cultivated Plants). Strengthening international cooperation for risk management is the idea behind the pan-European forest risk facility (FoRISK). FoRISK’s role will be to provide information about transboundary problems, get the leading countries involved, and enable local exchange. It should further be a platform for communication between science, policy, and practitioners. These were some of the results of a group work activity wherein the present experts were asked to provide feedback on the achievements of the FoRISK pilot so far and give guidance on further work before the Ministerial conference in Bonn 2024 makes a decision on the continuation of the FoRISK.

From FOREST EUROPE, we would like to thank all participants, co-organizers, and all involved speakers for their support and valuable insights provided, including also presentations on the experiences with spruce bark beetle from Germany (Ralf Petercord, Ministry of Agriculture and Consumer Protection, North Rhine-Westphalia), Czech Republic (Vit Sramek and Milos Knizek, Forestry and Game Management Research Institute), Poland (Kamil Szpakowski, General Directorate of State Forests Poland) and Lithuania (Glazko Zbignev, Ministry of Environment Lithuania). We hope to continue with this important work to safeguard the future of our forests.

The post Bark beetle outbreaks in forests: a pan-European view first appeared on FOREST EUROPE.

The workshop is part of FOREST EUROPEs work towards the implementation of a pan-European forest risk knowledge facility (FoRISK) to support forests adaptation to changing climatic and site conditions as well as to enhance the resilience and mitigation potential of forests at a pan-European level.

The post Joint Workshop | Living with storms: towards resilience and adaptation to forest disturbances first appeared on FOREST EUROPE.

Therefore, the Ministry of Agriculture of the Czech Republic and FOREST EUROPE are organizing a joint workshop in order to exchange knowledge on the best practices and allow for the adoption and transfer of innovative solutions while establishing cooperation and strong partnerships across pan-Europe to prevent and better control biotic threats such as bark beetle outbreaks.

The workshop is part of FOREST EUROPE’s work towards the implementation of a pan-European Forest Risk Knowledge Facility (FoRISK) to support forest’s adaptation to changing climatic and site conditions as well as to enhance the resilience and mitigation potential of forests at a pan-European level.

Check here the programme of the workshop.

Preliminary Agenda

This joint workshop is scheduled to take place from May 30 to June 1 2023 in Breznice, Czech Republic, and will be hosted by the Ministry of Agriculture of the Czech Republic.

30 May 2023

–  Arrival of Participants

–  Transfer to the venue from Prague airport/city center

–  Small refreshment

–  Seminar and discussion

–  Welcome dinner

31 May 2023

–  Seminar and discussion

–  Lunch

–  Excursion

–  Dinner

01 June 2023

–  Wrap up session

–  Lunch

–  Transfer to Prague Airport with an estimated arrival at 14:30.

The post Joint Workshop: Managing Biotic Threats in Forests – Lessons Learned from Bark Beetle Calamities first appeared on FOREST EUROPE.