The project aims to protect Atlantic area forests, a crucial resource, by providing decision makers and foresters with concrete solutions to create climate change resilient and adapted forests. This will be achieved through ecosystem-based approaches developed at demonstration sites with different forest management, different species (and genomes), trials in arboreta, innovative data analysis, transnational cooperation, and dissemination of information to forestry stakeholders and civil society.
The overall objective of the project focuses on the protection of forests in the Atlantic area, seeking to provide concrete solutions to decision-makers and forest managers in order to create resilient forests adapted to climate change while maintaining their goods and services. To this end, work will be carried out in several demonstration sites under different types of forest management, different species and their regions of origin. Provenance trials in arboretums, data analysis with new inventory and monitoring technologies (LiDAR, IoT), transnational cooperation and dissemination of information to forestry stakeholders and civil society will be carried out
Specific objectives are to: (1) Improve the infrastructure of the REINFFORCE project by adding new trials using arboretums dedicated to forest adaptation to climate change and establishing new links with partners further south in anticipation of a warmer and drier climate in the north, and (2) Demonstrate how forest tree species behave to adaptive forest management measures in different demonstration sites of contrasting conditions along the Atlantic arc. Based on the data generated, solutions on how to adapt forests to secure forest resources and their associated goods and services in European countries of Atlantic influence will be validated and promoted.