Description

European forests cover more than 1/3 of the land area and play a vital role in Europe’s environment, economy, and society. Forests provide many benefits to society regarding climate regulation, raw materials, habitats for biodiversity, and many other services. Climate change is a major challenge to European forests, as demonstrated by recent heat waves, extended drought periods and disturbances (storms, wildfires, insect outbreaks). Climate change may lead to shifts in tree species ranges, changes in forest productivity, tree mortality, and increased disturbance damage. Hence, it is essential to assess the extent of the impact of ongoing climate change on the functioning of trees and forests. Past and recent changes in forest structures and functioning can be analysed with data from large long-term forest monitoring programs such as ICP Forests1 , the national forest inventory (NFI) networks2,3, or networks such as ICOS4 , LTER5 , or TreeNET6,7,8 Within the FORWARDS Horizon Europe project, forest data from different programs, projects and other initiatives are collected, with a focus on quantifying the impacts of climate change on forests. These datasets are collected by the forthcoming ForestWard Observatory, a pan-European monitoring and evaluation tool that will help demonstrate the impacts of climate change on forests and guide decision making for practical forest management. This call invites Applicants to propose projects developing applications that utilize or enrich the Forestward Observatory datasets, or systems for data collection that can be integrated, for instance developing web applications that link to the ForestWard Observatory and rely on its datasets to strengthen the outreach of practical knowledge and best practices for effective adaptation and mitigation strategies, including
synergies with biodiversity, to practitioners and other end-users.