eco2adapt

The eco2adapt project is a five-year Horizon Europe project aimed at helping stakeholders manage forests to optimize social and ecological resilience. By using the concept of nature-based solutions, we combine interdisciplinary knowledge from researchers and stakeholders in Europe and China to gain insight into cultural perceptions and provide incentives for adapting management and policies.

The purpose is to

InNovaSilvas contribution

Provides a solid foundation for smart tools to assist multi-stakeholders in creating, managing, and protecting resilient forests

The goal is to:

• Establish a knowledge base with data and perform ‘FAIRification’

• Develop protocols for machine learning to estimate disturbance effects and ecosystem services

• Design a portfolio of species and management tools for stakeholders

More about the project

the eco2adapt consortium co-constructed the project idea through discussions with stakeholders, NGOs, forest users, and landowners. The consortium has analyzed the bottlenecks that make European and Chinese forests socially and ecologically poorly prepared to cope with climate change. The causes range from inappropriate species selection and planting in unsuitable soils and climates, inappropriate management actions, poor resilience to abiotic and biotic hazards, species invasions, market and policy pressures. Also, landowners and forest users are unwilling to invest in plantations in climate hotspots due to a lack of appropriate insurance premiums if the forest is damaged by storms, fires, droughts, insect and pathogen attacks.

Therefore, a portfolio of tailored management solutions and innovative bioeconomic and management business models, including insurance, governance, and certification, are proposed so that stakeholders can interact differently with a multifunctional socio-ecological forest system at a regional scale. A range of groundbreaking tools will also be provided to monitor forest vulnerability and resilience (such as invasive species and biodiversity) for use by different societal groups, from the citizen to the policymaker. By including tailored communication for all levels of society, we will reach a wide audience with the capacity to create positive change.