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Newsletter 4: January 2010

Editorial

Actually, the main point we want to discuss is the last general Workshop. First of all, many thanks to the organisers, Poppy Radoglou, the Greek team and to all the attendees for contributing to the Action. We could not expect a better meeting organisation!!
Finally, lot of work has been done in a very good mood. We feel that Echoes enters now in an efficient and sympathic working period.
The next meeting will be held in Hungary, Sopron. Thank you very much to the Hungary members for their offer.

And all the Echoes Team wishes you a happy new year!

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Content

About Echoes
From the participants…
Contacts

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About Echoes

Ongoing (?) issues...: Country reports and The Echoes FaceBook. Message from a hopeless Echoes secretary

1/ Only 5 national reports are still missing.
Many countries have made a big effort since 23 reports are available on the Echoes website here .
We are still expecting the reports from Denmark, Lithuania, Latvia, Norway and Portugal. Cheer up!


2/ Desperate is the right word to describe the Echoes Secretary’s mood when somebody talks about the Echoes Facebook. Could you be so kind and help her? We really think this tool is the way to create hearty convivial surroundings. So, we are waiting for your picture!!

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Echoes website: Members-only area is open

For the WGs’ work, folders were open on the restricted area. Documents could be upgraded online. We think this new tool will be very efficient and useful for the Echoes Working Groups.
Your ID and password will be sent by emails by this week. Do not hesitate to contact the Secretariat if you do not receive any news and information.

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Next training School “Impacts of Climate Change on Growth and Mortality of Forests in Europe”

The Training School will be held at the University of Freiburg (Germany) on April 19 – 22, 2010 (‘icebreaker’: April 18).
Objectives and activities:
The Training School offers young‐stage researchers (preferably PhD and post‐doc students) in the field of climate change impact studies unique cooperation and networking possibilities. As the School is linked up to the international TRACE 2010 conference1 (April 23 – 25, 2010), it offers furthermore valuable conferencing experiences.

The program of the School consists of presentations by key‐note speakers, interdisciplinary discussion forums and group work activities. Report‐back presentations at the TRACE conference are planned, besides publications in the conference proceedings. Group delegates are encouraged to present their group work outcomes, and to critically reflect on relevant conference topics.
The final Training School program will be shaped based on the interests of the participants. Group work activities will relate to the identification of relevant climate factors and parameters to describe climate change impacts on forests in Europe, as well as to the resilience of trees.
For registration and additional information, please contact Ernst Van der Maaten Ernst.van-der-Maaten@iww.uni-freiburg.de before January 31, 2010. The final selection of participants will be announced latest February 14, 2010.

The specific Echoes webpage here .

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General Workshop, 1-4 November 2009 in Thessaloniki. WG works: feedback and next steps

WG1 Action
ECHOES Working Group 1 “Impacts” aims at elaborating an overview of climate change impacts on European forests over the recent past (ca. 50yrs), facilitating projections for the future. One of the tools to achieve this is a so-called “hot-spot”-approach, which was decided upon at the Florence meeting. Hot spots are planned to be identified with regard to the most vulnerable sites, forest compositions and regions under climate change, and the most impacting climatic factors.
At the Thessaloniki workshop a hot-spot questionnaire was developed that will be distributed among all ECHOES members. Also it was planned to compile progress reports on experimental climate change studies and gradient analyses (altitudinal, latitudinal and precipitation) on a European scale, for a better understanding of climate change impacts. These exercises will be presented at the WG 1 2010-workshop in Sopron. Lastly, the following climate change impact-related talks were presented in Thesssaloniki:

  1. Monitoring Climate Change Effects – an Introduction (Guy Landmann).
  2. Climate Change Impacts on European Forests (Ernst van der Maaten) – based on country statements on observed and expected climate change impacts.
  3. Remote Sensing of Vegetation Assessment – basic features, recent state, future trends (Frantisek Zemek).
  4. Monitoring Tools for Drought Stress in Trees: the Case of Avoca, Ballinvalley in the Republic of Ireland (Armand Tene).
  5. The Climate Change footprint of Phenology (Steffen Tager).

At our next general workshop additional presentations are planned on Economical Monitoring of Climate Change Impacts (Ilario Goio) and Retrospective Climate Change Scenario’s (Martine Rebetez).


WG2 Action

Building on the proposals of an internal Task Force Working Group 2 (“Adaptation”) intensively discussed its work plan for the remaining time of the ECHOES Cost Action and agreed on a list of topics which will be further worked on by sub-groups. Most of these topics will target at a scientific publication or a targeted session in an upcoming Action meeting. A first screening of the web data base on adaptive measures yielded promising results. Country experts are expected to update and complete the country inputs via the ECHOES WP2 web-based data base tool until April 2010.
Lead persons for the subsequent analysis of the data base were selected. WG2 participants are invited to articulate their interest to participate in the planned analysis and writing tasks:
  1. Close to Nature Silviculture as adaptation strategy (lead: Peter Brang)
  2. Regional Adaptive capacity (lead: Marcus Lindner)
  3. Adaptive Fire management (lead: Yannis Raftoyannis)
  4. Tree species suitability modeling (lead: Manfred Lexer)
  5. Framing adaptation strategies (Sven Wagner)
  6. Case study to analyse trade-offs in ecosystem services and functions under adaptive management
  7. Adaptation and Natura 2000 (lead: Matyas Csaba)
  8. Comparison of national adaptation strategies (focus on stakeholder inclusion and implementation) (lead: Carina Keskitalo).
WG3 Action
It was decided to compile and publish three review papers during the course of the COST Echoes
  1. Review of model projections of forest sink, led by Thomas Groen.The entrance is the large variety in projections of the future sink strength of European forests. Published literature, as well as European scale studies and national official Member States projections exist.
  2. Silvicultural options for mitigation review, led by Jean-Luc Peyron and Gert-Jan Nabuurs.The paper will review forest management strategies aimed at carbon sequestration.The aim is to make a step forward compared to existing reviews in this field, and concentrate on the variety across Europe. Furthermore, the link to the impacts and adaptation working groups can be made.
  3. Mitigation potential through bioenergy from European forests, led by Martin Lukac.The main point of the paper is to illustrate the capacity and of EU forests for the substitution of conventional energy sources and raw materials by applying a simple supply/demand model.
Timing: first draft on spring 2010. Rather complete draft: autumn 2010, to be discussed during general meeting.

From the participants…

A paper

Lindner, M., Maroschek, M., Netherer, S., Kremer, A., Barbati, A., Garcia-Gonzalo, J., Seidl, R., Delzon, S., Corona, P., Kolström, M., Lexer, M.J., Marchetti, M., 2009. Climate change impacts, adaptive capacity, and vulnerability of European forest ecosystems. Forest Ecology and Management doi:10.1016/j.foreco.2009.09.023
This paper provides a state of knowledge review on Climate change impacts, adaptive capacity, and vulnerability of European forest ecosystems reflecting the state-of-art before the start of the ECHOES Cost Action.
Contacts: Marcus Lindner (EFI )

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The MOTIVE webpage has been recently launched

MOTIVE Models for Adaptive Forest Management will work on topics closely related to ECHOES. MOTIVE investigates adaptive management strategies that address climate and land use change. It also examines the impacts of these changes with respect to a broad range of forest goods and services.

The project focuses on a wide range of European forest types under different intensities of forest management. Specific attention will be given to uncertainties and risks and how they can be considered in improved decision support tools.

This project is supported by the European Commission under the 7th Framework Programme for Research and Technological Development.
The MOTIVE website has been launched. More information here: http://www.motive-project.net/

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....in United Kingdom

From Nov 16–20, the Scottish Climate Change Impacts Partnership (SCCIP), together with the UK Climate Impacts Programme (UKCIP) hosted a week-long series of workshops entitled "Scotland Projections in Practice Week" aimed at raising awareness of the new UKCP09 climate change scenarios, and stimulating discussion on how they might be used. These scenarios differ from previous releases in that they also contain quantitative estimates of the uncertainty of the predictions, which researchers can use to calculate the risk of certain things happening. The week consisted of both Practitioners' workshops to discuss the new scenarios and how they might be used, and User Interface Training workshops giving experience in how the data could be extracted and manipulated. Dr Robin Mathews, Head of Climate Change, the Macaulay Institute, gave a talk at the Land-use, Agriculture, Forestry & Biodiversity Practitioners workshop on the Wednesday, followed by presentations from Dr Mary Christie from SNH, Dr Duncan Ray from Forest Research, and Dr Eileen Wall from SAC. This was followed by a panel discussion on points raised during the talks. Further details of the workshops and copies of the presentations are available here .




A new comprehensive report "Combating climate change – a role for UK forests” by Read, D.J., Freer-Smith, P.H., Morison, J.I.L., Hanley, N., West, C.C. and Snowdon, P. (eds), with a sound contribution from the Macaulay Institute (M. Nijnik et al.) has been published in the UK. It is available from the Stationery Office, Edinburgh .
An assessment of the potential of the UK’s trees and woodlands to mitigate and adapt to climate change. According to Peter Freer-Smith (Chief Scientist, Forest Research), many have commented on the very great extent to which the assessment has achieved its objectives as set out in our remit, and also on the accessibility of the two documents (full report, and the briefings). We have seen some of the excellent press coverage. Also, in London, at the meeting, the comprehensive and authoritative coverage of the very complex subject by both Hilary Benn (Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs) and Tim Rollinson (Director-General Forestry Commission) indicated strong commitment to now take the science review forward through a range of mechanisms. These mechanisms include Tree Council's activities, e.g. the launch of National Tree Week 2009, on November 25, and London meeting of the Global Partnership on Forest Restoration, on the 26th November. These are just several examples of joint science-policy efforts for making trees in the UK matter to everyone and for using UK woodlands to combat the changing climate. The press release that accompanied the launch can be found here .



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Contact: Jean-Luc Peyron



Contacts

Natacha Massu , Echoes secretariat Jean-Luc Peyron , Chairman


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