It was a busy time for our CLEANFOREST core group members, traveling to several international conferences and meetings, some of them supported by COST Action grants.
CLEANFOREST was present during the eLTER Consortia meeting in Sofia on 3-5 June 2024. The Chair (Rossella Guerrieri ) was invited to present the COST Action during the morning plenary session ‘eLTER Consortia meeting’ on the 5th June. In the afternoon, Rossella and Klaudia Ziemblińska (Coordinator of Young Researchers) were invited to give a talk at the eLTER’s Early Career &Friends session. We were specifically asked to share our experience on how to empower young researchers and get them actively involved in our Action. Two local members of our Action in Sofia, Miglena Zhiyanski and Lora Stoeva, presented our poster of CLEANFOREST COST Action during the 3-days event.
Arne Verstraeten introduced CLEANFOREST during the 40th ICP Task force meeting in Prague on the 13-14th June. Arne’s talk was scheduled within the session Co-operation, initiatives and projects with other international organizations and programs. Arne introduced the overarching goal of the Actions, that is providing a comprehensive assessment of global change drivers in Europe and how they affect forests. Moreover, he updated on current review and meta-analyses each WGs is working on, with two activities involving ICP Forests both in terms of data on atmospheric deposition (WG1) or expertise relevant for review (WG4). Last, but not least, Arne presented calls for grants, with particular reference to the Short-term Scientific Missions, which provide young researchers with funding for mobility and networking.
In June, the city of Stockholm hosted the XXVI World Congress of the International Union of Forest Research Organizations IUFRO on the 23-29 June, with the topic ‘Forests and Society towards 2050’. According to the Stockholm Congress Statement, the Congress brought together 4271 participants from 102 countries, and it was an excellent opportunity for knowledge exchange and interactions among scientists across a broad spectrum of disciplines and between scientists and stakeholders. The IUFRO conference was also a great opportunity for CLEANFOREST members to meet in person and interact as well as to present the COST Action and the activities carried out within WGs. On the 25th June, Richard Nair gave a talk on ‘Next Generation Experiments and Monitoring Networks for Forests Under Global Change: CLEANFOREST WG4 ‘, within the session T5.12 Experimental underpinning for projections of forest futures. On the 27th June was Danielle Creek’s turn, with her talk on ‘Combined effects of climate extremes and atmospheric deposition on forest growth and water-use efficiency’ presenting the systematic review WG2 is currently working on in the session.
The IUFRO congress was also the perfect venue for three of our enthusiastic young researchers to present their work supported by grants within our COST Action: Stavroula Zacharoudi presenting a poster on Soil CO2 fluxes and stocks in two typical Mediterranean oak-dominated ecosystems during the session T1.13 Forest management for climate change mitigation), Giorgos Xanthopoulos, presenting a poster on Carbon fluxes of a natural Mediterranean Aleppo pine ecosystem using eddy covariance and soil respiration measurements during the session 1.3 Forests in a changing world – impacts on carbon and nutrient dynamics, Wojciech Kędziora presenting a poster on ‘Does fertilization effort pay off at harvest? A case study from 50 years old birch plantations for sustainable bioeconomics’ during the session T2.7 Fast growing trees in support of sustainable bioeconomy
Our enthusiastic young researcher, Andrei Popa attended the final conference of the COST Action PEN-CAFoRR Action CA19128-Pan-European Network for Climate Adaptive Forest Restoration and Reforestation, held in Belgrade on September 4-5. The aim of this conference was to facilitate the dissemination of the results of the activities undertaken in the PEN-CAFoRR COST Action. Most of the presentations focused on forest restoration and reforestation, showing good practice examples and innovative methods to enhance the ability of newly established forests to face climate change. Under the context of closing a COST Action, multiple representatives of ongoing COST Actions were present, among which Andrei Popa represented COST Action CLEANFOREST. The CLEANFOREST poster was one of the most visited posters mostly because of the hot topic that the project is addressing, i.e., the impact of climate change and air pollution on forest health. Conference participants were interested, on the one hand, in the results of WGs and, on the other hand, in how they could be involved in the project. By participating in this event, we hope that more researchers are aware of the project mission and the ongoing work done by CLEANFORESTers.
