News & Events

From next 21 to 24 May, 2012, an international conference titled “Tackling Climate Change: The Contribution of forest scientific knowledge” will be held in Tours, France.

This international conference will focus on the current state of knowledge on climate change impacts on forest ecosystems, services and activities. It will highlight methods and challenges to mitigate or tackle climate change impacts, both before they arise and once they have occurred. It will show how climate change and forest sciences address the issues facing forest managers.

Climate change is expressed by its impacts which need to be analyzed before the implementation of efficient and effective actions. Two broad topical categories are:

· the assessment of the current knowledge and understanding of climate change impacts;

· the identification of appropriate measures that are likely to reduce the impacts, exploit beneficial opportunities, increase the adaptative capacities or reduce the forcing of the climate system.

Read more about the programme and join the event here

During last December 2011, several MANFRED Round Tables with local stakeholders from the forest sector took place in three of the project’s selected transboundary Model Regions.

On 6th December, a Round Table on “Sustainable forest management strategies as an instrument for territorial adaptation to climate change effects” was held in Quart, Valle d´Aosta, the Italian side of the Valle d´Aosta – Rhône-Alpes – Wallis case study area. The event was organized jointly by the project partners the Autonomous Region Valle d´Aosta and the Italian Ministry for the Environment, with the support of the Institute for Timber Plants and the Environment of Turin. The event aimed at engaging local stakeholders in order to discuss with the Italian representatives of the MANFRED team the first results of the project activities, forest operators, experts in the sector, local decision-makers and authorities, students in forestry as well as media and general public from Valle d´Aosta and Piedmont. In this context, stakeholders could share their knowledge on the local situation of forests as well as describing best practices in forest management in these territories.The emerging debate allowed to identify their preferences in the definition of the forest management adaptive practices, and the relevant excerpts results are already available online on the MANFRED website on-line “Round Table” section here.

On 15th December, the initial session of the Round Tables on new approaches in management of protection forests and forests with protective role has been initiated in Ljubliana (Slovenia), in the Model Region Slovenia – Friuli Venezia Giulia – Karnten. The meeting, organized by the partner the Slovenian Forest Service aimed at the evaluation of forests protection management strategies in Slovenia, the production of new recommendations for forestry praxis and the exchange of experiences on that field with other Alpine space countries. Participants from four main forestry institutions in Slovenia dealing with protection role of forest shared knowledge on present protection forest management system in Slovenia, quantification of forest management activities in protection forests and evaluation of forestry practice approach to protection/protective function of forest stands. the result of the discussion was a set of recommendations that will improve, optimize and target management of protection forests in Slovenia and a draft structure of educational programme for foresters, which will fulfil present gaps in their knowledge, and everybody interested can deepen its contents here.

Finally, on 21st December, a Round Table with local stakeholders sector was held in the Italian side of the project´s Model Region Valle Camonica – Graubünden. The event, organized by the Italian project partners ERSAF and the UNICATT in the headquarters of the Valle Camonica Mountain Community in Breno (Italy), allowed disseminating the results of the MANFRED analysis developed in Valle Camonica regarding local scale evolution of future forest fires and ozone risks scenarios as a consequence of climate change. In this context, ERSAF described its activities on future forest fires hazards scenarios while UNICATT showed the results of the 2011 project´s ozone monitoring campaign. Local stakeholders from the region were also illustrated and showed great interest on the results of the studies on climate variables evolution trends for the area as well as on the main tree species distribution projections as emerging from possible climate change scenarios. This stimulated debate on potential adaptive management strategies to face climate change in local forests, and also its outputs are now available on the MANFRED website.

All these MANFRED Round Tables are part of a living network where the debate on the various issues does not exhaust in the various meetings, but instead proceeds in a continuous on-line discussion – conducted through the multiple communication channels of the project – between all the interested subjects inside and outside the Alpine region that are willing to offer their contribution to the implementation of the MANFRED activities. Then all of you interested in participating, share knowledge and contribute with your inputs and in all the Round Tables’ topics that will be at the centre of debate in the continuation of the MANFRED project, the MANFRED partnership is waiting for cooperating with you! Please join us in the MANFRED project Linkedin group by following these instructions:

If you do not have a linkedin account, please register at www.linkedin.com!
1. Go to http://linkd.in/tJFMsf;
2. Insert email and password;
3. Click on the yellow button to join the RT subgroup.

Please, join the MANFRED Group as well:
1. Go to: http://linkd.in/t2h2MU
2. Click on the yellow button to join the MANFRED Group

On next 16th February 2012, in the premises of the Catholic University of the Sacred Heart in Milan (Italy), one MANFRED Round Table on extreme events and their correlation with climate change effects in Alpine forests will be organized by the Catholic University of the Sacred Heart and the Lombardy Regional Agency for development of Agriculture and Forestry (ERSAF), with the support of the Italian Ministry for the Environment, Land and Sea (MATTM).

The Round Table will allow to introduce the MANFRED work and scientific analysis on forest extreme events and their possible link to climate change impacts in the framework of the Alpine Convention Protocol on “Mountain Forests” to stakeholders from all the Italian Alps and abroad.

In this context, the Italian organizing partners UNICATT and ERSAF will present their scientific studies conducted in the project famework, respectively on the creation of a WebGis Platform for the statistical geo-referenced analysis of forest extreme events at the Alpine scale and the MANFRED-developed 4FIRE model for fire risk forecast.

The event will also see the reports on case studies on extreme fires and extreme fire management from competent authorities and operators from the Italian Alpine regions, (such as the Civil Protection & Italian Forest Service), as well as from abroad (the Swiss Federal Institute for Forest, Snow and Landscape Research WSL Research Programme Forestry and Climate Change – a MANFRED partner).

The Round Table aims at fostering debate and transnational sharing of knowledge on extreme events and extreme fires management practices in mountain forests as well as on possible adaptation strategies in light of climate change.

The event is expected to supply a relevant added value to the MANFRED partnership’s experience.

Download here the Round Table programme.
Follow us on the MANFRED media to get up to date on this and other project’s outputs!

The 25th Task Force Meeting of the International Cooperative Programme on Effects of Air Pollution on Natural Vegetation and Crops (ICP Vegetation) will be held from next 31st January – 2nd February 2012 in Brescia, Italy, in the premises of the city´s faculty of the Catholic University of the Sacred Heart. In this context, a parallel one-day high-level Workshop on Ozone will be also held on Tuesday, 31st January. The event is organized with the support of the MANFRED project partner the Catholic University of the Sacred Heart – Faculty of Brescia and by the Province of Brescia – Department of Environmental Protection, Ecology and Mining, Energy.

The ICP Vegetation was established in 1987 under the United Nations Economic Commission for Europe (UNECE) Convention on Long-Range Transboundary Air Pollution (LRTAP).The ICP Vegetation is an international research programme investigating the impacts of air pollutants on crops and (semi-)natural vegetation, which reports to the Working Group on Effects (WGE). The programme focuses on the following air pollution problems: impacts of ozone pollution on vegetation and the atmospheric deposition of heavy metals and nitrogen to vegetation. In addition, the ICP Vegetation is taking into consideration impacts of pollutant mixtures (e.g. ozone and nitrogen), consequences for biodiversity and the modifying influence of climate change on the impacts of air pollutants on vegetation. The results of studies conducted by the ICP Vegetation are used in assessments of the current, and predictions of the future, state of the environment. 35 Parties to the LRTAP Convention participate in the programme.

The programme is led by the UK, has its Programme Coordination Centre at the Centre for Ecology and Hydrology – Bangor and is funded by the Department for Environment Food and Rural Affairs (Defra).

During this international congress, the MANFRED Project and its activities will be given a significant attention. At this meeting, two Posters of the project will be showcased: one will to describe the whole project structure and aims, while the second will focus on the research on the effects of ozone on Alpine forests conducted within the MANFRED framework.

Moreover, researchers from the Project Partner UNICATT will present some of the modeling results made available by the analysis conducted in the framework of

the project in the case study areas of Valle Camonica and obtained by the empirical data from the tower for the monitoring of ozone fluxes in the municipality of Paspardo (Italy).

We at the MANFRED partnership guess it will be a perfect moment to discuss with the international scientific community engaged in analyzing the pollution effects on vegetation, the MANFRED results, as well as an occasion for its dissemination and publicity.

Read more about the programme of the event here

This very catchy video – titled “European Forests: Central to the World We Live in” and available on the EuropeanForest´s Channel – gives an overall picture of Europe’s most versatile ecological infrastructure, tracing a path from south to north and from west to east. As we tour around Europe, this video provides an answer to the question why forests continue to be so important to each region, even in the 21st century.

The EuropanForests´ Channel is the on-line straming channel broadcasted by the European Forest Institute (EFI), an international organization established by European States with the aims of conducting research and providing policy advice on forest-related issues. It also facilitates and stimulates forest-related networking as well as promotes the supply of unbiased and policy relevant information on forests and forestry.

The EFI advocates for forest research and for scientifically sound information as a basis for policy-making on forests, something in close connection with the whole philosophy inspirating also the MANFRED project.