Forests: why “doing nothing” can’t be the cure

superbadmin on May 15, 2023

#RestorationStory by Maaike de Graaf

A few weeks ago, I visited my son who is studying in Scotland. He took me for a walk in the Cairngorns, the UK’s largest National Park, which is a fantastic area. Only afterwards, I realised what we have lost in our densely populated Netherlands: the decreased diversity in landscapes, gradients and biodiversity became painfully apparent. For instance, in Scotland, I have seen lichens with the size of a fist, at the end of the branches of oaks. I have never seen that in my home country. Most likely this is due to air pollution as lichens are very sensitive to this. I suppose I do not have to remind you of the atmospheric nitrogen concentrations in the Netherlands, nor of the acidic rain in the past. 

Oak moss (photo: Rudolphous – Wikimedia Commons)

But why am I telling you this? I have been working in several ecosystems as a restoration ecologist but have not seen such a large public dispute on the need of rehabilitation as in the field of forests. It seems that we have 17 million forest managers in Holland, all having a strong opinion on forest management. It must be our country spirit, having strong opinions, as we also have 17 million soccer coaches. Most of these millions of forest managers are convinced that our forests are natural by origin (which they are not). As a consequence, they consider ‘doing nothing’ to be the best way to improve the quality and health of our forests. They completely ignore human impact on forest, which we apply not only by planting, management, and recreation, but also by invisible processes such as impacts of climate change and hydrological changes. Acidic and nitrogen deposition have significantly accelerated the weathering of sandy soils: in the last decades, the same amount of calcium and magnesium have leached from the top of the soil as in the 17.000 years before. And is still continuing. In Brabant, we often measure pH-values below 3. To better understand this: pH-value 3 is compared to vinegar. Imagine being a tree in such conditions: your roots develop poorly, and your capacity to take up nutrients and water is seriously hampered. Your vitality sucks, and you will feel a little unstable. On top of this, you would have to deal with lowered ground water tables, imbalanced nutrient availability (due to nitrogen deposition) and climatic changes. You are stressed by multiple factors. And in addition, you struggle with the loss of connectivity to other forests and pollution by light and sound, all factors that diminish the size of suitable habitat for forest plants and animals.  

Diversifying Pine forest in the Dutch demo: Maaike and her team cut some trees, planted others (e.g. Tilia cordata, Quercus robur; with bamboo as wild life protection bamboo)
Diversifying Pine forest in the Dutch demo: Maaike and her team cut some trees, planted others (e.g. Tilia cordata, Quercus robur; with bamboo as wild life protection bamboo)

Personally, I do not believe that ‘doing nothing’ will be the cure for large scale forest recovery. Even if we were to stop forest management, we humans still affect the forests through the processes I have explained above. This is precisely why I believe in using all knowledge, tools and means we have to help our forest to survive. This entails reinstalling higher ground water tables, cutting, planting, leaving dead wood. Introducing missing species, adding rock dust to complement leaching. We have to do it! And I am happy to see it is being done in the Netherlands and beyond, with a great variation in management being applied. Because I also believe that when the future is uncertain, we need to diversify risks, and try different approaches to find out what works and learn from practice. 

So why are many people in resistance to forest management, even in forests that should serve multiple purposes? One of my Belgian colleagues recently said that urban societies are alienated from forest practice:  Her words were: “They think the forest is their pet”, which I can truly relate to. I can understand that you don’t want to cut your pet, but why don’t you want to pamper it either? Why not revitalizing the forest, supporting it to be healthier?

Demo in Groote Heide

  

Here we forest practitioners should dare to look at our own acting. We send different messages, and we are thereby confusing our audience. We tell them about small-scale forest management in the Netherlands, reducing clearcut areas to less than 2 times the tree height. Meanwhile we proudly present pictures of helicopters spreading rock dust, in order to reduce acidification impact. Small-scale management? Such images convey the implicit message of large-scale actions, in a way that many associate with noise, air pollution and nitrogen emissions. Is this how we understand forest restoration? Let us be aware of the messages we send in our enthusiasm on forest management and put them in perspective. Let us work against the Zeitgeist pushing us to convey simple stories, and instead tell of the complex reality of gradients, nuances, and diversity, that needs a variety of solutions. 

So, to conclude, we have work to do. Both in restoration and in communication.  

On April 14th 2023 Maaike presented this column in Dutch language to the KNBV, the Netherlands organisation of Forest Managers. The column is also published at their website.  

All photos except oak moss by Maaike de Graaf

Old-growth forests continue to disappear in Europe despite protection commitments

superbadmin on May 11, 2023

OLd-growth forest in Romania

A new commentary published in “Science” warns of the alarming loss of old-growth forests in Europe, which continue to disappear despite protection commitments made in the EU Biodiversity Strategy. The commentary is authored by an international team of scientists, including three researchers active in SUPERB: Martin Mikoláš, Miroslav Svoboda (Czech University of Life Sciences Prague) and Bart Muys (KU Leuven).

According to the researchers, a key barrier to better protection is the incomplete identification of many old-growth forests. They argue that comprehensive mapping of old-growth forests – and an immediate moratorium on logging where these are most likely to occur – is urgently required.

Old-growth forests are under high and rising pressure in many parts of the world, including Europe. In most EU countries, very few old-growth forests remain and they are typically small and isolated. While the EU Biodiversity Strategy for 2030 mandates their legal protection, old-growth forests loss continues unabated.

“These forests are critical for biodiversity conservation; many endangered species depend on them, including wolves, lynx and bears, and a myriad of beetles and fungi”, explains Martin Mikoláš from the Czech University of Life Sciences, Prague, the lead author of the article. “They also store vast amounts of carbon, so they offer a natural solution against climate change. Despite their importance, we are currently failing to protect this natural heritage. Urgent action is required to better protect old-growth forests before it is too late.”

Regarding the implications of old-growth forest protection measures for managed forests, Prof. Bart Muys from KU Leuven added: “The objective of the EU Biodiversity Strategy 2030 to strictly conserve all old-growth and primary forests in EU should not lead to conflicts with forests that are managed in the long term through well-defined, biodiversity-oriented, close to nature forest management with only minor interventions, such as selection forests (Plenterwälder, forêts jardinées) in the Pre-Alps, or oak forests with long rotation cycles in European lowlands, as old-growth forests are characterized by not being actively managed for a long period of time. However, non-intervention management of these forest stands, which preserves at least a portion of these forests, should be encouraged to realize their full ecological potential in exchange for compensation for providing ecosystem functions to society in lieu of timber harvesting.”

Read the full commentary.

Photo credit: Karol Kalisky, Arolla film

Monitoring biodiversity around Europe’s largest planted forest

superbadmin on May 8, 2023

#Restoration Story by Priscila Jordão (EFI)

Is there room for biodiversity around Europe’s largest planted forest? The second SUPERB General Assembly took our 36 partners and Advisory Board members on a trip to the Landes forest in Aquitaine, France, to dig out the answer: a definite yes for biodiversity! There, the SUPERB partners INRAE, IEFC and Alliance Forêts Bois are planting 10km of hedgerows to protect Maritime pine plantations against windstorm and fire damage and provide corridors for wildlife.

While many people think of hedges as bush vegetation, they can also consist of trees. In the case of our demo, pairs of broadleaved and coniferous species such as oaks and stone pines will be planted in rows with enough space between them to create a barrier against fire, wind and pest dispersal. At the same time, the hedgerows will be connected in strategic locations to allow wildlife to move between them, explained the lead of the SUPERB demo in Aquitaine, Hervé Jactel, Director of Environmental Research at INRAE, during the excursion.

What will start with 10km of hedgerows has the potential to expand to approximately 850.000 hectares of pine plantations in the same area. But since upscaling can only happen with public acceptance and buy-in, the SUPERB team is monitoring already-planted, mature hedgerows so that their biodiversity and resilience benefits can be clearly demonstrated to land owners, forest managers and the wood industry.

For a glimpse of what this monitoring work looks like in reality, the project team visited one of 30 forest stands where classic and modern biodiversity monitoring techniques are being applied, including the use of classical traps but also of aerial drones and LIDAR systems. They are helping researchers from SUPERB and other projects to detect the presence of birds, bats, fungi, bacteria, insects, small mammals, butterflies, different shrub and tree species – and even reptiles – in the area.

The visit to the Landes forest wrapped up three days of intense collaborative work and meetings at INRAE’s and IEFC’s Bordeaux premises. As part of the SUPERB General Assembly, our project participants updated each other and helped connect the dots between the fieldwork that is taking place in the project demos and SUPERB’s different workstreams, spanning a wide range of topics from forest governance and biodiversity to restoration finance and stakeholder engagement.

One of the highlights of the meeting was the third day, dedicated to discussions around upscaling and how to make restoration resources available to a diversity of users. To accomplish this mission, a SUPERB “Gateway” is in the making: a platform providing a comprehensive information to stakeholders interested in forest restoration (from restoration best practices to modelling data, from decision support tools to information on potential funders). Stay tuned to learn about the next steps!

Stories as enablers for ‘deepscaling’ forest restoration 

superbadmin on April 20, 2023

#RestorationStory by Rina Tsubaki (EFI)

Science is the key to the future of our forests. Without it, we cannot restore and make forests resilient to climate change. But is science really all we need? What about the role stories play in forest restoration and, thinking even bigger, in systems change?  
 
If we want to change a system and foster lasting improvements in our society, we need to tackle the root cause of societal issues. Through SUPERB, we are ultimately aiming at systems change by collectively restoring forests and biodiversity in twelve locations in Europe. Part of this work involves exploring how people see, feel and value these places in their neighborhoods so that the work can continue beyond the project.  

So, why am I bringing up “stories” here? What’s that got to do with forest restoration and systems change?  

When you start looking into the literature about systems change, you won’t miss the work by Donella Meadows, an American environmental scientist who authored Thinking in Systems. According to Meadows, there are different leverage points to intervene and impact how a system operates. Whether it is a new project or a policy, most interventions we make are unlikely to persist for a long time. Instead, Meadows proposes a mindset change and emphasizes that the ability to see the paradigm differently is more effective for a big, long-term shift. From this point of view, what we need is to scale ‘deep’ in addition to scaling ‘up’, since the former addresses shifts in culture and relationships, while the latter replicates existing initiatives. 

Undeniably, the future of forests we restore through SUPERB will be in the hands of local communities, practitioners and decision-makers. Not only will the existing narratives transform, but new narratives will emerge. These narratives connect interested individuals and groups and bring new people into the conversation. While some narratives may support and build on the work we leave behind, others may use it with specific interests. That is why understanding the power of story is important, as it can impact how people see, feel and value restored forests in their surroundings (For more about the role of story in systems change, I invite you to read this beautiful piece by Ella Salmarche). 

So, what can we learn from the existing restoration stories? In search of successful stories, I used a YouTube Data Tool to collect the most viewed YouTube videos with the keywords, ‘restoration’ and ‘forests’. While some of them are linked to other types of restoration, we could use these examples to identify the elements that contribute to making these stories visible online. 
 

no. channel video title view count url 
1 National Geographic 50 Years Ago, This Was A Wasteland. He Changed Everything | Short Film Showcase 5160840 https://youtu.be/ZSPkcpGmflE 
2 Andrew Millison The Canal That Accidentally Grew A Forest In The Arizona Desert 3814238 https://youtu.be/jf8usAesJvo 
3 Happen Films Man Spends 30 Years Turning Degraded Land Into Massive Forest – Fools & Dreamers (Full Documentary) 3363467 https://youtu.be/3VZSJKbzyMc 
4 Leaf of Life How Spain Is Turning It’s Deserts Into A Farmland Oasis – Greening The Desert Project 1754190 https://youtu.be/nmOX622P-OU 
5 Down To Earth How A Farmer Turned 90 Acres Of Wasteland Into A Lush Green Forest In Odisha 1577571 https://youtu.be/C08FAa-Vlj0 
6 Mossy Earth We’re Bringing Back Iceland’s Forgotten Forests 751498 https://youtu.be/K-r2EetCtO0 
7 Trees for Life Restoring The Ancient Caledonian Forest Alan Watson Featherstone TEDxFindhorn 677705 https://youtu.be/nAGHUkby2Is 
8 DW News Justdiggit: Restoring Dry Land In Tanzania | Global Ideas 431109 https://youtu.be/RPJ9T4yAEGs 
9 XAG Official Application | Forest Restoration By XAG Agricultural Drone In Brazil 398272 https://youtu.be/CqivF6PaFfY 
10 Mossy Earth We Are Reforesting The Ocean – Here’s How 371184 https://youtu.be/pzmc8ztD4e8 
11 Growing Small Turning Degraded Land Into Forest, Woman Builds Natural Homestead 303170 https://youtu.be/T145drzKhGc 
12 Mossy Earth Bringing Back The Ancient Viking Forests Of Iceland | Rewilding Iceland 300703 https://youtu.be/5lAegYUc1lU 

While different storytelling techniques are employed in these videos, the top four have something in common; they focus on one simple solution. These videos also use a narrative that praises the power of nature. For example, the National Geographic documentary highlights planting grass as a solution to percolate the water into the ground, eventually transforming a wasteland into a biodiversity-rich area. Another video by the permaculture practitioner Andrew Millison also talks about the raised canal structure as an accidental solution for native forests to grow in a swale, emphasizing how nature makes it possible. Three out of five top videos also discussed biodiversity as a positive byproduct resulting from forest or nature restoration.  

Protagonists as “heroes” is another commonly used technique in the top videos. Among the top five, three feature one “hero” throughout the story. For example, the Down to Earth’s video features a female farmer in India who bought the degraded land in the 1980s to experiment with organic farming techniques, eventually resulting in a lush forest cover. Other stories added personality to the protagonist by showing their daily routine and interviewing family and friends. 

Unsurprisingly, journalistic videos talk about conflicts, disagreements, risks and disasters. The example from Happen Films highlights the conflicts between the protagonist, who believed gorse could transform farmland into forests, and local pasture farmers who were sceptical towards his idea. In addition, a Lead of Life video with 1.8+ million views treats desertification in Spain as a risk. 

While third-party YouTube channels produced the top 5 videos, some were also filmed by those involved in forest restoration. A good example is Mossy Earth, who filmed their own on-ground restoration actions in Iceland, indicating how a forest practitioner could take a viewer on a journey to forest restoration.  

But a powerful story does not require high-end video editing techniques and journalistic skills. This is portrayed in the TED talk by the Tree of Life founder, Alan Watson Featherstone, who listed key restoration principles in his inspirational talk. 

While these are some takeaways from the top YouTube videos, a story can also be told at a much more grassroots level. A story we tell our families, friends and colleagues can be as powerful as the story told in a professional setting. As Alan Featherstone says, “Restoration is about reconnecting the stands in the web of life, but it’s also about reconnecting people with the rest of the web”. Similarly, a story can bring the web of life closer to people, and people closer to the web of life. 

Answer our survey on restoration practices and help us improve forest restoration in Europe!

superbadmin on April 13, 2023

Are you active in forest restoration or were you part of any restoration actions in the past? Then you have precious knowledge to share! We at SUPERB are conducting a survey to compile a multidisciplinary knowledge base of practical restoration across Europe that will help us determine what influences success or failure in forest restoration.

We would be grateful for your participation in the survey through this link.

The survey is aimed at forest managers, restoration practitioners, and any other stakeholders involved in specific restoration projects. It seeks to understand your general knowledge about forest restoration, restoration actions, and to assess the result of your restoration activities through precise metrics.

The data from the survey, led by SUPERB partner Instituto de Ciencias Forestales (ICIFOR-INA) of CSIC (Spanish National Research Council), will be anonymised and results made publicly available to support forest managers’ decisions and improve future restoration actions.

Forest restoration is understood as any action or project that aims to improve the biodiversity, ecological integrity and provision of services in forest ecosystems, such as rewilding, reforestation, afforestation, remediation, rehabilitation, prestoration (restoration that specifically includes climate change adaptation), or any shift in direction towards a closer-to-nature forest management.

In case of any questions, please contact .

Apply to join the WSL Summer School on blue-green biodiversity!

superbadmin on April 11, 2023

The WSL Biodiversity Center and the Blue-Green Biodiversity Research Initiative are pleased to announce their upcoming “Summer school: Blue-green biodiversity. Research and practice and the interface of aquatic and terrestrial ecosystems”, to be held in August 2023 in Davos, Switzerland. 

Freshwater and terrestrial ecosystems are closely interconnected but they are often studied in isolation from each other. In the context of global change, it is urgent to understand how blue (water) and green (land) ecosystems are similar or different in terms of biodiversity patterns, ecological and evolutionary processes, and their responses to global drivers. Evidence-based understanding of blue-green biodiversity is necessary to inform policies and action to halt and reverse nature loss that threatens human well-being.

The goal of the “Summer School: Blue-green biodiversity. Research and practice and the interface of aquatic and terrestrial ecosystems” is to provide an in-depth understanding of the linkages between aquatic and terrestrial ecosystems and the interdependencies between social and ecological systems. While focusing on Swiss habitats, we will highlight how an integrated approach that considers the ecological, evolutionary, and social dimensions of blue and green ecosystems benefits the conservation, maintenance, and restoration of biodiversity. 

The program consists of lectures, field excursions, and group work led by WSL and Eawag researchers and invited speakers. State-of-the-art knowledge and approaches will be presented and discussed considering the expectations of current and future blue and green ecosystems from scientific, nature conservation, management, and socio-economic perspectives. The participants will reflect on their own scientific work with respect to other disciplinary methods and discuss possible benefits of interdisciplinary approaches in their field.

The Summer School is open to PhD students, MSc students in their last year, and PostDocs in biodiversity research and related disciplines from any country in the world. The application deadline is the 1st of May 2023.

Visit their webpage for more information.

Join our “prestoration” session at IUFRO 2024

superbadmin on April 6, 2023

At the IUFRO World Congress taking place in Stockholm in 2024, SUPERB is hosting a panel discussion and poster session on “Prestoration – combining restoration and adaptation – of European forests for people and planet”.

In our session, we will focus on bringing together major challenges: 1) the need for forest restoration for the conservation of forest biodiversity and provision of ecosystem services, and 2) the urgency of forest adaptation to climate change. 3) Furthermore, the practice side is facing diverging expectations both from policy side and society on the role of forests to protect biodiversity, adapt societies to global change and mitigate the impacts of climate change including through forest-based products. At the same time, 4) the finance sector is more than ever ready to invest into nature and green solutions, however there is large uncertainty about the quality and long-term benefits of investment opportunities, how to credit these, and how to effectively bring the large demand for investment opportunities and the widespread but dispersed need for locally-adapted prestoration (restoration combined with adaptation) actions together.
If you work on one or more of these four topics/perspectives related to forest restoration, please submit your abstract via https://iufro2024.com/call-for-congress-abstracts/ and make sure to contribute to an inspiring session!

Featured image: Prestoration planned in SUPERB’s demo in Arnsberg, Germany.

Replacing monocultures with natural forests in the Făgăraș Mountains

superbadmin on April 5, 2023

SUPERB demo area in Romania

SUBERB’s first restoration activities in Romania

More than 7,000 saplings were planted in Romania’s Upper Dâmbovița Valley this autumn as part of SUPERB. In this area, SUPERB’s partner Foundation Conservation Carpathia is gradually restoring the natural mixed forest which existed until the 1950s through ecological restoration actions replacing the spruce monoculture.

Artificial spruce monocultures have a reduced diversity of plant and animal species, are more fragile in the face of storms, snow and insect calamities and negatively influence soil structure and acidity.

“Until the 1950s, a natural mixed forest grew here, which also had fir, beech and sycamore,” said Mihai Zotta, Conservation Director of Foundation Conservation Carpathia. “After being logged, the forest was replaced by an artificial spruce monoculture for purely economic reasons. Through ecological restoration actions, we are facilitating or imitating natural processes as far as possible and taking into account the future effects of climate change. We are creating pockets of light and planting deciduous species in these areas to restore the natural, strong and biodiverse mixed forest. The gradual return of the natural forest in place of spruce monoculture is a long-term process, in successive stages that can last up to twenty years.”

The ecological restoration activities will lead to the gradual recovery of the mixed forest, specific to this region, without affecting the natural balance of the area. The process involves the spacing of deciduous tree species (beech, sycamore, rowan, elm) by removing spruce trees from around them or by creating openings in the dense spruce forest, in order to brighten the interior of these forests and create space for natural regeneration and planting of saplings.

The saplings were provided by Foundation Conservation Carpathia’s own nurseries and were produced in an organic way without the use of chemical treatments. The seed sources have also been carefully chosen and are mainly local.

The sycamore, rowan, elm and beech seeds were collected three years ago from the surrounding forests, and the fir seeds were purchased six years ago from a nearby certified seed source grown in similar mountainous conditions.

Our SUPERB demonstration area in Romania is located in the eastern Făgăraș Mountains, on the forest properties owned by Foundation Conservation Carpathia, and the project is implemented in collaboration with the Circular Bioeconomy Alliance, established by His Majesty, King Charles III.

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This text was originally published by the Foundation Conservation Carpathia on carpathia.org.

Ash dieback and its consequences on genetic diversity

superbadmin on March 16, 2023

Check out the videos of the EUFORGEN Webinar Series

Rising temperatures across Europe, extreme weather events, higher fire risk or increased vulnerability to biotic disturbances such as pests and diseases are some of the consequences of climate change on forests. In the case of biotic outbreaks, scientists have been investigating how to make tree populations more resilient from a genetic perspective and to understand alternatives for tree conservation in case of diseases or pests.

To further explore this issue and understand today’s scientific advances, the EUFORGEN Secretariat organised in February a webinar series entitled “Biotic outbreak management of the Genetic Conservation Units Network: case study on ash dieback”, which consisted of three online sessions open to the public. The virtual sessions featured a panel of researchers and scientific experts to examine the specific problem of ash dieback in Europe from different angles.

You can find more info on the series including the videos here.

Featured image via Pixabay

Forest management and biodiversity: Postgrad course in Bialowieza reserve

superbadmin on March 13, 2023

Are you a Postgrad interested in “Forest Management and Biodiversity Across Europe”? If yes, then join this PhD training school in Bialowieza, Poland, organized by the Forestry subject area of the Euroleague of Life Science (ELLS) together with the Graduate School in Production Ecology & Resource Conservation of Wageningen University from 10-17 September 2023.

This post-graduate course aims to bring together a diverse group of lecturers and participants to study and discuss current issues in management of European forest resources.

You can register via https://www.pe-rc.nl/European_Forestry_2023

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