Ecological restoration methods for sustainable forest use
29 – 31 August 2022 we invite you to a forest restoration seminar to discuss ecological and economical usefulness of forest restoration in the Nordic countries.
As we have entered the UN Decade on Restoration, it is timely to investigate how restoration methods for forests can be applied to increase sustainability and reduce climate risk within forestry.
Reduced climate resilience and biodiversity crisis
Forestry in Scandinavia with its intensive harvesting practices has led to the simplification of tree species composition and homogenization of forest structure, thus inducing low resilience of boreal forests to global change. Specifically, climate scenarios for the next 100 years are not ‘good news’ for the large-scale use of spruce in forestry. Increasing storms, and a future warmer and moister climate, particularly during winter, will harm spruce growth and survival over large southern regions due to increased insect and fungal attacks, and increased frequency of severe summer droughts will set back growth and survival and increase the risk of wildfires. In addition to reducing the resilience to climate change, forestry has also been the main driver behind a large-scale biodiversity crisis, and biodiversity is presently under the combined pressures from fragmentation, degradation, and climate change.
Possible win-win solutions?
This situation, while true, is not without possibilities for the forestry sector. The EU Taxonomy proposals and future developments will increasingly push for changes using economic incentives and opportunities such as selling carbon storage capabilities and promoting smart biodiversity off-setting. This also implies that it is now timely to review the possibilities for, and increase the dialogue on, possible win/win solutions based on ecological restoration science. The classic paradigm of restoring a reference state of forests is not adequate under a global change scenario. Restoration policies should restore ecosystems accounting for the future changed state, rather than for a past, static, reference state. For instance, there is an urgent need to restore green infrastructure able to facilitate the movements of organisms under climate change that provide spatiotemporal functional connectivity. This can only be realized through cooperation among all the relevant actors, including forestry.
Forest restoration seminar 29 – 31 August 2022 in Asker, Norway
To discuss ecological and economical usefulness of forest restoration in the Nordic countries we invite forest restoration researchers and forestry stakeholders to present their work and views during a 3-day seminar 29-31 August 2022. The seminar will include sessions on topics such as restoration goals and moving targets under global change, potential benefits of diversification of forest structure (through e.g., variable density thinning and dead wood creation) or promotion of temperate deciduous forest. We will also arrange two workshops during the seminar to promote initiation of cooperation between researchers and with stakeholders.