SUPERB final General Assembly: three days to celebrate and discuss the pan-European four-year project’s legacy!
Restoration Story by Louisa Bouri-Saouter
After four years of intensive and inspiring collaboration between researchers, forestry practitioners, policymakers, NGOs, local communities, and forest and nature agencies, our community had the chance to reunite one last time for the SUPERB Final General Assembly (GA).
Held between the 10th and 12th of September in the heart of Europe, in beautiful Leuven, the GA hosted passionate exchanges about success stories, lessons learned and achievements from the 8 different work packages. As Elisabeth Schatzdorfer, project coordinator, nicely put it in her welcoming speech “This General Assembly is meant to appreciate together what we have achieved“.
After giving some historical context about the city of Leuven and its well-known university, KU Leuven, local host and engaging professor Bart Muys paved the way for the first session of the event, which focused on updates from the work packages.
Results of the “huge collective efforts,” as highlighted by Alex Bush, researcher at Lancaster University, were shared with an audience eager to hear about the diverse outcomes after four years of collaboration. For example, the WP6 (Ecosystem and Biodiversity Management) team presented some of their main deliverables, including the development of cost-efficient systems for monitoring biodiversity and ecosystem services. They used various techniques such as DNA metabarcoding, ecoacoustics, and drone-based remote sensing. WP3 (Practical Knowledge) leader, Iciar Alberdi highlighted her team’s scientific articles and infographic developed from 18 historical national narratives on the evolution of forest restoration. Another main achievement, from WP5 (Governance and Society), was the creation of a toolkit for exploring public perspectives on restoration and monitoring governance of restoration projects in the EU.
An important part of these diverse new resources can be now found on the Forest Knowledge Gateway, another major achievement of WP8 (working on Upscaling Forest Restoration), which even had its own dedicated spot in different following session. As explained to a very engaged audience by Gesche Schifferdecker, Communications Manager, the Gateway website is a curated and science-based knowledge platform designed to provide different types of stakeholders with the information they need for their forest restoration and integrative forest management activities and projects. Thomas Lundhede, leader of WP4 (The economics and innovative sustainable financing of restoration) followed with an introduction of the Marketplace, a platform now also linked to the Gateway, which aims to help match nature-positive projects (such as large-scale restoration projects) with potential funders.
The Forest Knowledge Gateway presentation began with a much-needed stretching session
In the afternoon, our consortium members got new perspectives through discussions about good practices from SUPERB’s demo sites and from the results of various research outputs, presented either as oral presentations or posters. Those sessions were organised in different rooms to allow for more in-depth discussions on a range of quite fascinating topics: planning and design of bee highways, acoustic monitoring of birds and bats as indicators of forest restoration, post-fire treatments in Mediterranean forests… and many more.
Poster presentation
On our way to Leuven’s Faculty Club to conclude the day with a sophisticated multi-course vegan dinner, Bart Muys gave us the pleasure of telling us the story of Leuven and particularly of the Grand Beguinage, an historic area we walked through, established around 1232 as a community for religious women.
This was a beautiful conclusion to a first day at the General Assembly that was as intense as it was cheerful!
Bart Muys is organizing an historical visit around Leuven
The second day started with individual Work Package parallel sessions. Teams discussed the outcomes of their collaborations and how they plan to continue disseminating their knowledge. These collective takeaways were later shared with the entire SUPERB assembly.
From these discussions emerged a shared feeling of wanting to upscale and build upon the knowledge acquired over the past four years. Iciar Alberdi, leader of WP3, shared that they would also like to highlight all the methods they have been using in their work while Jürgen Bauhus, leader of WP6, emphasized that several steps still need to be taken to fully understand the effects of restoration on biodiversity. Others discussed the final deliverables to come, as well as their strong willingness to continue collaborating and to maintain the large and vibrant community they have built. The “Building Upon” sessions of the day reflected these shared aspirations.
“These large-scale collaborations are leaving an important legacy, and the communities will continue building beyond SUPERB,” expressed Elisabeth Schatzdorfer, EFI Principal Scientist and SUPERB Coordinator, during the closing of the General Assembly. She also expressed her deep gratitude to researchers, implementers, demo representatives for their great work, as well as to all the administrative and finance staff working diligently behind the scenes.
The day concluded on a joyful note with the “SUPERB song” written by Gesche Schifferdecker, celebrating the project’s great collaborative spirit and its lasting legacy, embodied in the Gateway.
Of course, the General Assembly wouldn’t be complete without a visit to the forest. Now it was time to see restoration in action, making the lessons discussed over the past few days come alive!
On the last day, a group of participants joined our excursion to the Netherlands, starting with a visit to the inspiring Dutch Demo site in Horst aan de Maas. Amusement parks, horse-riding centers, agricultural lands… and of course forests, the landscape mosaic perfectly reflected the diversity of land uses in the area. When it comes to the forest, 150 years ago it was actually almost non-existent. The landscape consisted mainly of heathlands and sandy dunes with poor soil. Around 1900, pines were planted, and the harvested wood was primarily used for the mining industry. Over time, management practices evolved, and thanks to restoration and recreation purposes, the forest has become much more multifunctional, with a greater variety of tree species such as oaks and beeches, and a more diversified age structure.
The biggest challenge for restoration remained soil acidification, as nutrient cycles have been disturbed. This explains the philosophy of this demo “restoration starts with soils!”
Several measures have been applied to restore soil health, starting with hydrological restoration to improve the water system and reduce dehydration. The team also planted Tilia trees, a species producing nutrient-rich litter, on soils that are still relatively healthy and contain minerals such as calcium, potassium, and magnesium. These trees help bring minerals back to the surface from deeper levels in the grounds as their leaves decompose. They planted at least five trees per patch are already « human-sized » to further increase survival chances.
Tilia tree
Another, quite impressive measure was the use of helicopters to spread rock dust and replenish missing minerals. The Dutch demo team has also planted over 28 different species to observe how they respond to climate change and adapt to new conditions. By making the forest more resilient, they are also aiming at combating diseases affecting the area and particularly pine and fir trees.
Another interesting aspect of their work, as emphasized by Dutch demo manager Maaike de Graaf, is the dialogue with private owners. These private owners manage forest plots ranging from 1 to 50 hectares and represent about 30% of the area, while municipalities own about two-thirds. Many private owners are willing to actively co-create more biodiverse forests together with the Dutch team and have agreed to significantly reduce harvesting, from usually 6 cubic meters per hectare to just 1.
After a pleasant lunch stop at a Café, the group headed to Groote Heide, a forest area planted around 120 years ago, notable for its many fens. Participants enjoyed a walk through a forest dominated by broadleaf trees, with a rich diversity of species including hornbeam, Tilias, Corsican pines, and birch.
For about 25 years, forest management had focused on hydrology and biodiversity, but the landscape looked quite different in the past, as our host showed us on a map from 1968. Large clear-cut areas and farmland were visible. In the early 1900s, when the forest was first planted, water production companies drained fens, and groundwater extraction became important for regional drinking water.
The Groote Heide area in 1968
In recent years, the priorities changed and water companies, which remain heavily involved in landscape management, have renovated extraction infrastructure and filled in ditches, allowing water production and nature protection to coexist. Forest managers implementing restoration measures in the area have also observed that filling the ditches contributed significantly to restoring soil diversity.
Retaining dead wood is another key measure in the area. Our host shared an interesting fact about how moss species began growing on large dead trunks, species that haven’t been seen in the South of the Netherlands for many years.
Our brave participants on the excursion, the last day of the GA
