The 26th International Union of Forest Research Organisations (IUFRO) conference took place between 23-29 June 2024 in Stockholm, Sweden, with the theme “Forests & Society towards 2050”. The conference brought together 4271 participants from 102 countries, amassing more than 3,500 presentations and 70+ showcases of innovations and tools. ForestPaths had the opportunity to participate in IUFRO through a booth where we could connect with like-minded organisations and individuals as well as through ForestPaths partners who presented insights and findings.
Image: ForestPaths booth at the IUFRO conference in Stockholm, Sweden.
We kicked-off the conference with Sara Uzquiano’s poster presentation on integrating biodiversity protection into Climate-Smart Forestry (CSF) as well as Marcus Lindner’s presentation on enhancing resilience, which is a key strategy to support CSF. These were followed by the co-organised ForestPaths session on this topic with other EU-funded projects such as, SUPERB, FORWARDS, TRANSFORMIT, WILDCARD and HoliSoils. The first day ended with ForestPaths partner Thomas Pugh from Lund University acting as moderator in the poster session “Modelling forest trajectories under climate stress and changing management” and with Amelie Muller from VITO presenting on time-explicit Life Cycle Assessment and the new tool bw_timex.
On the second day, ForestPaths partners Mikko Peltoniemi from LUKE and Cornelius Senf from Technical University of Munich (TUM) presented on using precision forestry to reduce the impact of root rot in Boreal forests and drought-impacts on European forests during 2018-2022 using the next-generation European forest disturbance maps, respectively. There were also two poster presentations that day by European Forest Institute partners; one by Florencia Franzini focusing on Climate and Biodiversity-Smart Forestry across Europe, moderated by ForestPaths’ coordinated Hans Verkerk, and one by Cleo Orfanidou on wood flows in the EU and the new open-source Python tool, aiphoria, for assessing and visualising dynamic wood flows.
Image: Florencia Franzini presenting and Hans Verkerk from EFI moderating during the IUFRO conference in Stockholm, Sweden.
On the third day of the conference, participants had the chance to go on various types of excursions to explore the Swedish forest and biodiversity regions.
Aleksi Lehtonen from LUKE began the excitement for the fourth day of the conference with his poster presentation on the potential of continuous cover forestry practices to enhance carbon sequestration in Finnish forests situated on drained peatlands. We then had two partners from Lund University, namely Annemarie Eckes-Shephard and Thomas Pugh, who were graced by a room full of participants. Annemarie presented on long-term forest stability while Thomas moderated the ForestPaths-sponsored session on "Modelling forest trajectories under climate stress and changing management".
Image: ForestPaths partner Annemarie Eckes-Shephard from Lund University presenting during IUFRO in Stockholm, Sweden.
Our final day at the IUFRO conference was kicked off with the co-organised session by ForestPaths, ForestNavigator, PathFinder, FORWARDS and Eco2adapt, “The new age of forest monitoring: A common European forest monitoring system in a global perspective”. Monitored by ForestPaths coordinator Hans Verkerk and ForesNavigator’s coordinator Fulvio Di Fulvio, the session featured a presentation on operational forest monitoring across Europe using Earth Observation by ForestPaths partner Cornelius Senf. During lunch, we had the opportunity to listen to Thomas Pugh who presented his poster on integrating various data sources to monitor and update the carbon dynamics of European forests. We ended our day, and the conference, with Alba Viana-Soto’s (TUM) presentation on estimating pan-Mediterranean reburn frequency using Earth Observation, which also featured the next-generation European disturbance maps, previously mentioned by her colleague Cornelius.
💪 Starting our last #IUFRO2024 day with a ForestPaths session on "The new age of forest monitoring," co-organised with @ForestNavigEU, @EuPathfinder, @ForwardsEU and @eco2adapt.
— ForestPaths Project (@forestpaths_eu) June 28, 2024
Check out Dr Hans Verkerk and Dr Fulvio Di Fulvio moderate the session😍 pic.twitter.com/WRr0LOsjwc
We want to thank each and every partner who participated in the 26th edition of IUFRO for their insights and contributions.
For more photos and detailed overview of the presentations and poster sessions, check out our LinkedIn page and X.
Find out more about IUFRO here.
