On 1 September 2024, ForestPaths celebrated its second anniversary, marking another year of helping to meet Europe’s climate and biodiversity targets by providing clear policy options that enable European forests and the forest-based sector to contribute to climate change mitigation while conserving their biodiversity and sustaining the services they provide to people.

Highlights from the past year include: 

• Concluded ForestPaths’ first Policy Lab, which brought together 19 diverse stakeholders to discuss forest-based policymaking and modelling for climate change and biodiversity, resulting in strategic insights and priorities for sustainable forestry and a circular bioeconomy.

• Organised a series of ForestPaths interviews and workshops across Europe has highlighted diverse strategies for Climate and Biodiversity-Smart (CBS) forestry. These workshops were held in Italy, Finland, Romania and the Netherlands. 

• Launched the Next-generation European forest disturbance maps. Have a look at the data and Earth Engine Apps.

• Introduced two open-source Python tools: Aiphoria - a tool, designed to dynamically assess and visualise wood material flows; Bw_timex - a tool for time-explicit Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) that improves the accuracy of environmental impact assessments.

• Launched the joint webinar series Forest Talks, co-created with sister projects ForestNavigator and PathFinder, with the first talk held in April 2023. 

• Published a 2023 Highlights video and an interview with ForestPaths’ coordinator Dr Hans Verkerk introducing the project.  

• Participated in IUFRO 2024 where several project partners presented results directly connected to ForestPaths.

• A blog post by VITO Remote Sensing how the ForestPaths project uses earth observation data and machine learning to create high-resolution maps of forest structure, addressing limitations of traditional monitoring methods to support climate change mitigation policies.

• Conducted several social media campaigns regarding #PreviousResearch, introducing ForestPaths partners through #ForestPathsFaces and began publishing interviews with project partners' involvement in IUFRO 2024, which you can follow through #ForestPathsIUFROinterviews.

• Sent out two issues of our bi-annual newsletter: one in December 2023 and one in May 2024.

• Held the external EC review meeting in early 2024, which aimed to report and assess ForestPaths’ achievements in its first 18 months. The meeting was a success and acknowledged the dedication and efforts of all ForestPaths partners.

Stay tuned for more updates as we continue to advance our mission in the coming year!