Action COST Echoes: Group 1: Impacts

Group 1: Impacts

Coordinator : Professor Heinrich SPIECKER

The issues will be discussed all through the Working Group meetings. The preliminary list of several key issues could be read below.

Assessment of past impacts on trees, soil, biodiversity and the forest sector
Ecosystem functioning: water, carbon and nutrient cycles, productivity, and resistance to drought as a part of the water cycle
Ecosystem dynamics: phenology, length of the growing season, distribution of species, population genetics …
Natural disturbance regime and hazards: insects, pests, droughts, floods, fires, fungi, storms…

Year 1: State of knowledge = one report / country

Year 2 & 3: Work on key issues

Monitoring and analysis:
Models, analyses and scenarios allowing detection, evaluation and understanding of impacts at different spatial and temporal scales or patterns.
Contributions to the design of a future monitoring taking into account climate change. Criteria and indicators for the evaluation of climate change impacts.
Impacts management:
Guidelines to detect/manage crises/opportunities; identification (nature, location) of risks; crisis and die-back management and communication.
Valuation methods of present/future losses/gains and losers/winners. Methods taking into account forest products and services, market and non market ones. Preference based approaches (multi-criteria analyses) and monetary valuation are two possible approaches.
Communication

Year 4: Guidelines and recommendations for managers ; identification of needs in the future researches and development projects.

Throughout the duration of the action: updating the national reports

List of members :

Cyprus (Cyprus Forestry Department)
Norway (Department of ecology and natural resource management, Norwegian University of Life Sciences)
Slovenia (University of Ljubljana Department of Forestry and Renewable Forest Resources)
Slovak Republic (National Forest Centre – Forest research Institute in Zvolen)
Spain (Universidad de Oviedo)
Belgium (University of Antwerp, Research Group of Plant and Vegetation Ecology)
Poland (Forest Research Institute)
Serbia (Institute of Lowland Forestry and Environment)
France (Ecofor)
Estonia (Estonian University of Life Sciences)
Italy (CNR-ISAFOM)
Greece (Forest Research Institute, National Agricultural Research Foundation)
United Kingdom (Centre for Human & Ecological Sciences)
Switzerland (WSL)
Ireland (University College Dublin UCD School of Biology and Environmental Science)
Danemark (Univ. of Copenhagen)
Germany (Institute for Forest Growth University Freiburg)
Lithuania (Lithuanian Forest Research Institute)
Finland (Finnish Forest Research Institute, Suonenjoki Unit)
Belgium (Laboratory of forest research and engineering, Université catholique de Louvain)
Croatia (Forest Research Institute)
Czech Republic (Institute of Systems Biology and Ecology, ASCR, v.v.i.)
EFI (European Forest Institute)
Finland (Finnish Forest Research Institute)