FORWARDS launches a new call for grants
The FORWARDS project, funded under Horizon Europe, has launched a new call for grants. This call aims to set up pilots for long-term climate impact forest monitoring sites across Europe. Current long-term forest monitoring networks provide important information on the impact of climate change on forests. Still, most monitoring networks are not particularly focused on assessing climate change impacts.
With this call, the aim is thus to increase the potential of existing forest monitoring sites – especially but not inclusively ICP Forests, ICOS or LTER sites (i.e., sites which already provide a basic set of monitoring data) – to assess the impact of climate and climatic extremes on trees and forests. European forests cover more than 1/3 of the land area and they play a vital role in Europe's environment, economy, and society.
Forests provide many benefits including climate regulation, raw materials, habitats for biodiversity, and removal of air pollution. Climate change is a major challenge to European forests, as demonstrated by recent heat waves, extended drought periods, and disturbances (storms, wildfires, insect outbreaks).
FORWARDS aims to prototype the ForestWard Observatory – a European observatory for forests' climate change impacts to support decision-making at strategic and operational scales. On the European and national scale, a major objective is to provide a broad perspective of disturbances, future risks, and critical vulnerabilities and threats to forests as strategic support. Current long-term forest monitoring networks provide important information on the impact of climate change on forests but are not designed to provide real-time information for studying forest disturbances. Prompt detection and characterization of forest disturbance and the production of official statistics are of primary importance and a crucial priority for effectively reacting to global warming and properly planning the current and future management of European forests.
Accordingly, FORWARDS will provide a comprehensive and pan-European assessment of forest disturbances, as well as tools and operative frameworks for monitoring carbon loss and recovery due to forest disturbances by exploiting satellite-based remote sensing data. Of primary importance, FORWARDS will provide a consistent, and statistically robust disturbance assessment for Europe.
Interested parties are invited to submit their proposals in accordance with the guidelines outlined in the Call for Grants document. The deadline for submissions is 31 January 2025 at 21:00 UCT+2.
For more information and to access the Call for Grants, please visit our Grants page.
