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Managing your forest or not? Find out with the INFORMA Forest Management Platform

informa_admin on 2023-03-15

By Jonas Simons and Bart Muys (KU Leuven)

Imagine you are responsible for a large, forested area in Europe. Will you manage it, or let nature run its course? If you decide to manage your forest, what would be the consequences? Would it store more carbon? Would it use its resources more efficiently, or produce more wood? What about biodiversity conservation? Would the unmanaged choice have more bird species? Another factor to consider is the frequency of disturbance events, such as fires and windstorms, which is increasing due to climate change. Since you will want to keep the resilience of your forest high, which management option would contribute better to this goal?

Unfortunately, current research answers these questions ambiguously. The relationships between the management of forests, provisioning of several ecosystem services and resilience to disturbances remain rather unclear. In addition, several of the ecosystem services we expect from forests have trade-offs between each other. The bottom line is: before deciding what to do with your forest, you should know your viable management options (including the decision to not manage), and which consequences different implementation options have on how your forest functions. In Work Package 2 (WP2) of INFORMA, led by KU Leuven, we will investigate this knowledge gap. To do so, we are developing the INFORMA Forest Management Platform: a new, large database that is specifically designed to answer management-related questions for European forests.

The idea behind the Platform is to compare adjacent managed and unmanaged forest patches all over Europe. This is being done by linking unmanaged patches with one or more managed patches in their vicinity (as shown in the banner image of this post). We can then compare ecosystem functioning between the forest patches in such a cluster.

However, if we want to statistically extract the effect of forest management, we should keep other factors that influence ecosystem functioning as similar as possible. This is why forest patches within a cluster should differ as little as possible in terms of climate, soil, topography (elevation, slope and aspect) and land use legacy.

Also the species composition is accounted for. This variable is somewhat more complex: within the cluster, we make sure that there is at least one managed patch that has a similar species composition to the unmanaged patch. This allows us to investigate the effect of management that influences forest structure (such as thinning, logging, etc.) in all clusters. Since the choice of species can be a management decision in itself, if a cluster contains more than one managed patch, we allow for one of the patches to have a different species composition. In any case, the other properties, such as soil, climate etc., should still be as similar as possible.

Europe has multiple forest types. In order to make the database representative, we need to make sure that the major forest types are represented with a sufficient amount of clusters. To achieve this, five INFORMA core regions will be used for the Platform: the Woods of Brabant (Belgium, Atlantic forest), the Segre-Rialb Basin (Spain, Mediterranean forest), the Northern Karelia region (Finland, boreal forest), the Northern Limestone Alps (Austria, alpine forest) and the Râșca Forest District (Romania, continental forest).

All of these regions link to partners within the INFORMA project. These are local experts that help with the design of the Platform through 1) suggesting clusters to include in the Platform based on their expert knowledge of the region, 2) provisioning data that can be used to delineate the patches and perform analyses and 3) suggesting context-dependent variables to include in the analysis (for example, whether we should rather incorporate soil texture or soil depth in a specific region). In addition to these five regions, the Division Forest, Nature and Landscape (FNL) of KU Leuven will use its international contacts to expand the Platform into other European countries, thereby increasing its representativeness and quality.

The delineation of the patches happens in several steps. First, the WP2 members write a protocol, discussing in detail what the Platform should look like, as well as the minimum requirements for the patches and the clusters (e.g. size). In a second step, the local experts suggest several clusters in their region based on this protocol. Next, a session with WP2 members and the local experts is organized to discuss 1) whether the requirements have been met, 2) whether there have been obstacles and 3) whether there are more opportunities for finding additional clusters, or whether there are other things to consider. Once this has been resolved, we do a final checkup of the requirements based on existing databases and satellite imagery, and then delineate the final clusters to be included in the Platform. In a last phase, every patch in the database will be populated with site information derived from existing databases, as well as values indicating ecosystem service performance derived from satellite imagery, e.g. carbon sequestration and water-use efficiency.

Once the database has been populated and analyses have been done, it will finally be ready to be used in practice! For instance, the database can help guide policy-making: which ecosystem services require management and which do not? It can also be used by forest managers to determine whether and how they can optimize certain ecosystem functions in their forests. Furthermore, it can support scientists in further research, adding detailed and different analyses, field data campaigns etc.

Lastly, it can contribute to answering your very difficult question… what to do with your forest: to manage or not to manage? To find out the answers, stay tuned to the INFORMA website, where we will announce the launch of the Forest Management Platform in the course of the project.

Harnessing the full potential of Sustainable Forest Management in carbon schemes: An interview with I4CE’s Julia Grimault

informa_admin on 2023-02-09

Planting new trees is not the only way to offset carbon emissions. Managing existing forests to absorb more CO2 through Sustainable Forest Management (SFM) also holds great potential that has partially been recognised by some carbon certification schemes. Still, in practice, the real carbon sequestration capacity of SFM is far from being reflected by most carbon standards due to various technical difficulties – which the INFORMA project aims to help overcome.

The project’s carbon accounting expert Julia Grimault and her team at the France-based Institute for Climate Economics are gathering insights from research and practice on how to make SFM fully count towards carbon credits. Their goal is to improve current standards, support stakeholders working in the field to fund more climate-friendly forest management, and inform policy decisions, for instance, by the European Commission on its new carbon certification framework for removals.

Interested in Julia’s work? Then watch our video interview or read it below to learn about her research in detail!

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How can carbon credits foster more sustainable forestry practices?

The objective of carbon crediting is to direct funding, possibly new types of funding, towards climate-compatible practices. There are two types of benefits: first, you can try and get funding that is currently not going towards forestry or other sectors that might also need it – agriculture, for example. Then you make sure that the funding is brought on the condition that it has an actual benefit for the climate. This can happen through, for instance, afforestation, reforestation, improved management, and forest restoration after a climatic event. And you make sure that the use of that funding is efficient.

Talking about a concrete situation: in many European countries, forest owners have been affected by bark beetle attacks, so they clear-cut the forests and now need to plan something new. Would the use of carbon schemes make sense in this situation?

It depends on which type of schemes are implemented. In France, this is typically one of the practices and actions that are eligible. Because often forest owners cut the trees that have been impacted but don’t necessarily regrow any forests because of cost issues and, in some cases, disappointment. Carbon certification then helps to trigger forest restoration. This can also be done with public funding for countries which have a mechanism in place. In France, we have a bit of both. I’m not going to get much into details on how this is articulated but this is typically one of the possibilities to help trigger an action that otherwise we believe would not have necessarily been done.

Can elaborate on how we can bring together Sustainable Forest Management (SFM) and carbon schemes in the INFORMA project? What is your approach?

There are two types of difficulties with SFM. The first one is also linked to all types of forestry projects. It is the uncertainty that you have when measuring carbon impact. Because forests are living things, you have the uncertainty of measurement and non-permanence risk – the risk that the carbon is reemitted at some point to the atmosphere.

Also with Sustainable Forest Management, it is sometimes harder to quantify and evaluate carbon benefits. For afforestation it is easy. You have nothing and then something. Well, not necessarily nothing but it’s easier to quantify. For SFM you don’t always have the tools to measure what impact this or that forest practices will actually have on the carbon stocks and fluxes. We hope that the INFORMA project will help provide the tools to have better and more precise measurements of different types of stands and forests. That way we can better quantify the carbon impact of different practices on the different carbon compartments, such as living biomass, and soils, for example, that we don’t really know how to take into account currently.

Forest management is already included in some of the existing carbon schemes but not necessarily all types of practices. So we hope that the project is going to help provide the tools to either integrate more practices or be more precise in the measurements. But still keeping in mind that the more precise you get, usually the most costly it often gets too. We have to find the balance between precision, cost and being as robust as we can be. At the same time, still provide tools that are accessible and easily usable by stakeholders who are not carbon experts but people working in the field who still need to get comfortable with those tools.

What are you exactly planning to do to improve the measurements and how will you share your knowledge with the stakeholders you want to engage?

First, we want to identify what is already considered in existing carbon schemes. A lot of methodologies and schemes already exist and are still being developed. So first we want to see what is missing in those schemes and what is done properly. And then be able to spot shortcomings and what improvements the project can bring. They could be, for instance, what we call conceptual improvements, maybe for forest compartments that are not taken into account such as soils or harvested wood products that could be better integrated. Or it could be the use of new tools or apps, for instance, to help forest stakeholders and owners monitor carbon more easily and precisely.

Then we are going to present this to the different stakeholders like project developers, intermediaries, buyers and funders of these projects to see what comes out of it: if the tools that we propose actually could be implemented properly and if they are not too costly. We are also going to provide just before that a cost-efficiency analysis, trying to keep in mind this balance between precision and something usable. The end game of all this is to provide overall recommendations to the existing carbon schemes and to the European Commission, which is developing a new carbon certification framework for removals at the EU level.

How to provide EU-level recommendations if carbon schemes are sometimes also based on national laws?

There are some themes that are going to be quite cross-cutting. For example, the cost efficiency of some tools, the economic challenges of additionality, and maybe conceptual challenges such as non-permanence. These are problems that are faced more or less everywhere in Europe. Some recommendations can apply quite widely and others would have to be specific for geographic regions and types of countries. We will find out throughout the project!

Cyclones can help forests recover from dry spells, study finds

informa_admin on 2023-01-30

Although it might sound counter-intuitive, large-scale disturbances such as cyclones can also bring benefits to forests. This was documented by a study co-authored by INFORMA’s researcher Sebastiaan Luyssaert, from the Vrije University of Amsterdam. The study analysed the recovery of forests in East Asia after the passage of tropical cyclones using satellite-based images to measure forests’ leaf area.

The data showed that, sixty days after their passage, around 18% of the cyclones caused a decrease in leaf area, 28% brought no change while a surprising 34% led to an increase in leaf area. The latter occurred because, despite leaving behind a storm track, cyclones carried precipitation to forests, which helped them recover from dry spells.

The open-access study “Tropical cyclones facilitate recovery of forest leaf area from dry spells in East Asia”, authored by Luyssaert and Yi-Ying Chen, from the Research Center for Environmental Changes in Taipei, Taiwan, can be downloaded here.

Photo credit: Geoff Whalan/Flickr

Sustainable Forest Management as an effective tool to fight the climate emergency in rural societies

informa_admin on 2022-11-14

The 4th Forestry Congress of the Valencian Region, held on 10-11 November in Requena (Valencia, Spain), brought together more than 400 professionals and scientists from the sector. The congress focused on the role of forest management as part of the solution to the existing territorial imbalance between urban and rural areas in many Mediterranean regions and, specifically, in the Valencian Region.

The Polytechnic University of Valencia presented INFORMA at the event and discussed how Sustainable Forest Management (SFM) can increase the attractiveness of rural areas, putting them on an equal level with urban areas.

In Spain, a mass rural exodus led to depopulation and the abandonment of agroforestry activity in many inland and mountain areas in the 1960s and 70s. Although stopping rural exodus is difficult at the moment, it is possible to reverse the current inequalities that continue to cause depopulation.

“In the context of the foreseeable crises resulting from the climate emergency and the changing geopolitical situation, a return to rural areas is predicted for the near future. The conditions must be created for such a return in a fair and orderly manner”, said José-Vicente Oliver, INFORMA Project Coordinator at the Polytechnic University of Valencia.

“Forest management, with the creation of value chains based on it (wood and derived products, bioenergy, cork, high-quality food products) is a basic tool for creating an economy in the territory, structuring rural societies and anticipating risks associated with the current situation, turning them into opportunities. The European INFORMA project will improve SFM in the different forest ecosystems in the EU to embed climate change adaptation and mitigation into management models while also contributing to rural development and to the welfare of people living and working in forest areas“, added Oliver.

Press release: UPV coordinates major European research project to improve sustainable forest management

informa_admin on 2022-10-26

The goal of the INFORMA project is to develop and implement best sustainable forest management practices in the five most representative biogeographical regions across Europe
In addition, it will contribute directly with its results to the development of the European Forest Strategy 2030

Valencia, 19th October 2022 – Climate change has driven countries and organisations around the world to search for solutions to help mitigate or prevent its effects. While forests are suffering, they are also crucial to reducing emissions, as they are the most important earth’s carbon sinks: they sequester carbon by capturing CO2 from the atmosphere and transforming it into biomass.

However, this process is threatened by the increase in natural disasters, now more frequent due to the current climate emergency. In this context, the Information and Communication Technologies against Climate Change (ICTvsCC) group of the ITACA institute of the UPV (Polytechnic University of Valencia) is coordinating INFORMA, the major European forestry research project in the new Horizon Europe programme to improve forest management in this context.

The project, which has a total budget of €5.3 million and 14 partners from 8 EU countries, has a duration of four years. Its main objective is to develop and implement best sustainable forest management practices in the five most representative biogeographical regions across Europe (Atlantic, Mediterranean, Continental, Alpine and Boreal) and under future climate change scenarios, in order to preserve carbon sinks and promote carbon sequestration, while conserving their biodiversity and renewable natural resources.

In addition, INFORMA also aims to contribute with scientific rigor to the methodologies of quantification, monitoring, review and verification of existing carbon offset market instruments in Europe, especially in sustainable forest management actions in Mediterranean ecosystems. In Spain, carbon compensation mechanisms are the main tool for payment for environmental services today, as they already have demand (sectors and companies with diffuse emissions), supply (public and private forest owners) and regulatory mechanisms, such as the Carbon Footprint Registry of the Spanish Ministry of Ecological Transition and Demographic Challenge.

“In our country, the main threat to the preservation of ecosystems, but also of carbon stocks, is forest fires, as has become evident after the fires that occurred this summer in the Valencian Region. This type of disturbance is the main field of research in the pilot areas in the Mediterranean region, where the interactions between the current state of the forest, its sustainable management alternatives and the climate will be analysed. In this way, the project will allow the implementation of best practices for adaptive management to climate change in the different types of Mediterranean forest ecosystems, but also the mitigation by forest bioeconomy, i.e. the optimisation of carbon sequestration in managed forests and the industrial transformation and consumption of the main forest products (wood, cork, biomass, resins, etc.) as substitutes for materials and products coming from fossil or non-renewable sources with a high impact on greenhouse gas emissions” says José-Vicente Oliver, director of the ICTvsCC-ITACA group at the UPV and general coordinator of the INFORMA project.

Moreover, the project will contribute directly with its results to the development of the European Forestry Strategy 2030, currently being negotiated by the EU Commission, as well as to the MOSAIC Strategy of the General Directorate of Forest Fire Prevention of the Regional Ministry of Agriculture, Rural Development, Climate Emergency and Ecological Transition of the Valencian Regional Government (GV) and the recently announced Forestry Cooperation Fund by the Presidency of the GV for the coming years, whose objectives are the prevention and mitigation of the effects of forest fires on forest ecosystems and society, through the sustainable integrated management of agroforestry territory.

Author: Luis Zurano

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