News

For the January 2022 FOREXT Friday, we welcomed Venla Wallius (junior researcher) and Arnaldo Marques (trainee) from EFI to present an overview of digital and innovative services available for forest owners. They are mapping services, initiatives and projects worldwide, creating a database with the main findings inside Forestry 4.0 concepts. The work is a part of the NOMADI project (Green growth for the bioeconomy of North Karelia through digital transformation of forest services), more information: https://efi.int/projects/nomadi-nopeaa-kasvua-maakunnan-biotalouteen-digitaalisuudesta.

This was the last FOREXT Fridays for now, thank you to all our presenters and participants!

Marko Lovrić from the European Forest Institute presented insights in to the New EU Forest Strategy  for 2030 during the FOREXT-network’s monthly webinar in November.

His presentation is available here and the recording can be found below.

The FOREXT Network gathered, once again virtually, in the 6h Annual meeting on 9 November 2021. On the agenda were items such as work plan 2022, widening the network and more. The participants agreed that despite the restrictions brought on by the pandemic, the network has been successful in coming up with new activities, such as the FOREXT Friday webinars. We all very much hope to be able to meet in person in Norway in March 2022!

Our warmest thanks to Paul Catanzaro from University of Massachusetts for taking the time and sharing his insights of The Keystone Project, which selects and educates forest owners and community leaders who have a significant impact on their communities. The program offers these important, Keystone people information about forest ecology, sustainable forest management, wildlife habitat enhancement, and land protection through a combination of lectures, field trips, discussions and take home resources.

On the September issue of FOREXT Friday Milan Sarvaš, Director of the National Forest Centre – Institute for Forest Consulting and Education Zvolen, talked about support systems for private forest owners (new CAP-Rural development program 2023 -2027).

After the summer break, FOREXT Fridays started with the presentation by Petra Palátová from the Faculty of Forestry and Wood Sciences , Czech University of Life Sciences Prague. She shared the overall aim and recent results from a project FEM4FOREST, Forests in Women’s Hands, with a focus on the findings they have for the Czech Republic.

Watch the recording on Youtube:

In our May FOREXT Friday we heard the presentations of Gail Atkinson (Forest Research, UK) on the topic of Demonstrating climate change adaptation in woodland in South East England and of Tom Houlihan (Teagasc) on the development of an Irish Forest Carbon Tool.

One of the ways in which Forest Research is educating the community about how we can adjust the woodland management practices to better prepare our woodlands for the changing climate is the Alice Holt Forest climate change adaptation trail, which opened in 2019. The trail shows a range of climate change adaptation measures and options. Read more about the trail.

The Forest Carbon Tool takes user-defined descriptive information on the forest and combines it with existing growth models to estimate potential carbon storage over the lifetime of the forest.

Here are the links shared during the webinar:
Climate Change Adaption Demonstrator
Forest Research Climate Change Factsheets
Forest Carbon Tool

Watch the recording of the webinar on Youtube:

^{Photo: ©jurgal / AdobeStock}

The April FOREXT Friday focused on Estonian forestry. Allar Luik from Erametsakeskus gave an overview of Estonian forestry and then talked about the important role which  forest owners associations have in managing Estonian forests. Out of the the about 100 000 forest owners, approx. 15 000 are members in the forest owners associations. The benefits they get include one-on-one meetings with advisory specialists, subsidies for reforestation and forest inventories. Watch the recording here:

Note that towards the end of the webinar, we had a technical issue as our speaker lost his internet connection, so the recording shows a short pause.

Photo: ©Ilja / AdobeStock.com

In the March edition of FOREXT Friday, we heard from two experts at the Finnish Forest Centre.

The forests in Finland are not only economically important but also their recreational use is exceptionally wide. During the corona crisis, the Finns have deepened their relationship with nature and forests in particular.

As more than 600,000 Finns are forest owners, that is one out of ten Finns, the role of the Finnish Forest Centre in supporting them and other actors in the field means they need to develop their services all the time. In the webinar, Anna Rakemaa introduced the work FFC is doing in digital monitoring of forest use and Jyrki Haataja talked about Finland’s forest strategies, both national and regional. The webinar was facilited by Anssi Niskanen.

Watch the recording here:

Download Anna Rakemaa’s presentation

Download Jyrki Haataja’s presentation

Photo: Wille Heikkinen, Adobe Stock