EFI Network Fund project FOSPREF meets in Edinburgh

The second project meeting of the EFI Network Fund project FOSPREF-Wind (Wind risk to European forests under climate change) was held at Forest Research near to Edinburgh, Scotland on 26th - 27th February 2019. In total there were 14 participants from 7 different EFI partnership institutions (ISA, Neiker, Forest Research, SLU, DTU, SILAVA, and Forest Research Institute Poland).

The first day included a welcome to Forest Research and their work on forest adaptation. This was followed by a discussion of developments on stakeholder engagement and data availability within the Latvian and Polish case study areas. These areas are of particular importance because the potential for the outputs of the project to assist forest owners and managers will be assessed in these two countries.

The remainder of the meeting consisted of a set of interacting break-out groups investigating the forest growth model 3PGR adapted for different pine species, the wind risk model FG_R developed at Forest Research, the modelling of airflow and wind climate using tools from the Danish Technical University (DTU) including the industry standard model WasP, and discussions on the availability and resolution of soil data sets that are critical inputs for the 3PGR and FG_R models. The interaction between and within the break out groups was exceptional and considerable progress was made on defining the modelling requirements and data resources, the direct exchange of data between models, and potential outputs from the project.

Work will now focus on developing the models and applying them to the different case study area in each participating country (6 in total) to investigate the impact of future climate change on pine growth and vulnerability to wind damage.

More information about the project here.

For more info on the EFI Network Fund, click here.