One of the most relevant events in the forestry scientific community takes place every 5 years when researchers from all over the world meet at the Congress of the International Union of Forest Research Organizations (IUFRO). The 26th edition of this Congress was held in Stockholm (Sweden) in the last week of June, with more than 4000 participants and 3500 presentations under the theme “Forests and Society towards 2050”.
This multidisciplinary meeting of great magnitude is an excellent opportunity to give visibility to the lines of work of each institution, to network with international research groups, and to stay at the forefront of the different challenges and methodologies. Several groups from the Forest Science and Technology Centre of Catalonia (CTFC) have had the opportunity to participate in the conference. Here you will find a summary of their contributions:
Marta Serra, from the Forest Policy and Risk Governance group, presented Nature-Based Solutions (Firelogue) and the poster on Policy Coherence (FIRE-RES), as part of the Resilient Landscapes session, as well as the Environmental Justice (Firelogue) poster in the Fire and Health session. All these works were applied in the field of Wildfire Risk Management. IUFRO highlighted Serra’s intervention with an interview in the daily newsletter of the congress. You can read it by following this link.
Elena Górriz, co-leader of the Socioeconomics and Governance of rural systems group, coordinated the technical session “Implementing fire resilient landscapes” together with other FIRE-RES partners. Given the large number of abstracts received, two oral and three poster sessions were allocated. Górriz also presented “Economic resilience to fire” and moderated an oral session.
Pau Brunet, deputy coordinator of the FIRE-RES project, presented the Forestry Hub of Catalonia and how this new infrastructure aims to contribute to climate change adaptation by developing science-based solutions using wood products. He also participated in the resilient-landscapes poster session explaining “Innovative technologies and socio-ecological-economic solutions for fire resilient territories in Europe” developed in the framework of the FIRE-RES project.
Mireia Pecurul, co-leader of the Socioeconomics and governance of rural systems group, presented the study “Meeting the European Unions’ Forest strategy goals: a comparative European Assessment” to the session dedicated to European forest governance.
Marc Rovellada, from the Socioeconomics and governance of rural systems group, presented the poster of the results of the interviews on how current economic instruments affect joint forest management for fire risk mitigation at landscape scale (FIRE-RES) within the small-scale forest management session. He also gave the presentation “Forest grasslands as a nature-based solution for fire risk mitigation” of the COEVOLVERS project in the session Emerging socio-economic dynamics in wildland-urban interfaces.
Eduardo Collado, from the Sustainable Forest Management group, spoke on the short-term effects of close-to-nature management in sub-humid Mediterranean mixed forests for global change adaptation and mitigation in the session “Close-to-nature forestry for global change adaptation and mitigation”.
Jonàs Oliva presented “Interactions between climate and pathogen-pathogen in native pine forests” in the session on needle diseases in conifers.
Andreu Meijer, from the Forest Health group, spoke on “Resistography as a low invasive method for early detection of Fistulina hepatica in Castanea sativa timber production plantations”, in the session “Healthy trees for high-quality wood products”.
In addition to oral and poster sessions, the congress included an entity fair, presentations of sectoral innovations, plenary sessions of reflections towards the future, an awards ceremony, as well as a field visit. The next Congress will take place in Nairobi (Kenya) in 2029. Until then, researchers have the chance to contribute voluntarily to the IUFRO units of their respective disciplines.
Last modified: 4 July 2024
