Presenting the CLEANFOREST COST Action at the IUFRO RG 8.04 Conference “Role and Fate of Forest Ecosystems in a Changing World”
Bangkok (Thailand), 15-19 January 2024
Meeting link: https://iufro-bangkok2024.com/
The IUFRO research group 8.04 – Impacts of air pollution and climate change on forest ecosystems aims at assessing the complex effects of air pollution and climate change on forest ecosystems through promoting international cooperation an active interaction between specialists in several areas of forest sciences. This group encourages the exchange of scientific knowledge between scientists, policy makers and representatives of local to regional governments and institutions.
For the first time the biennial conference of this group was held in SE-Asia, an area particularly vulnerable to climate change and air pollution. This event represented a very good opportunity to share the activities of the CLEANFOREST COST Action with a broad community that shares the objectives of the COST Action. During the session 3 on” Plant ecosystems in a changing world: monitoring, modeling, and risk assessment”, a general overview of CLEANFOREST was presented by Dr Rocio Alonso inviting all participants to a dedicated CLEANFOREST side event later in the day, which was organized by members of the Cost Action in attendance of the IUFRO conference. During the side event, the specific objectives, coordinators and ongoing activities of the 4 working groups of the COST action were presented by different participants of the CLEANFOREST members. Also the Science Communication team was introduced, showing the current web page, main dissemination activities, current open calls for Short-Term Scientific Missions (STSM) and the next training school and general conference.
A key focus of the event was to highlight the fact CLEANFOREST encourages and supports participation of young and early career researchers, and invited those in attendance to join the CLEANFOREST Cost Action. Overall, the IUFRO Conference allowed the interaction with experimentalists, monitoring experts, and modelers from all over the world, and it was also a great opportunity to strengthen existing links among COST participants. The team also organized a side event dinner in the city for encouraging discussion and participation in the CLEANFOREST Action.
Speakers included:
- Rocío Alonso, CIEMAT, Spain
- Arne Verstraeten, INBO, Belgium
- Sami Ullah, University of Birmingham, United Kingdom
- Li Li, Nanjing Forestry University, China
- Yusuf Serengil, Istanbul University Cerrahpasa, Turkey
