SUSTREE

Project description

The promotion of climate change (CC) adaptation and the protection of the environment are central challenges of the Central Europe region (CE). With its manifold ecosystem services, CE forests are not only valuable reserves of biodiversity and pristine landscapes for recreation, but also provide renewable resources, bioenergy and offer employment in rural areas. In climate change, many forests are highly endangered, because the high velocity of change makes a natural adjustment of ecosystems impossible. Planting alternative tree species and utilizing the tree species’ intrinsic adaptive capacity are considered to be the most promising adaptation strategy. In CE approximately 900 million seedlings of the major tree species are being planted annually and would offer a unique opportunity to promote CC adaptation. However, the utilization of forest seeds and seedlings is mainly regulated on the national level without considering CC and certain CE countries even prohibit transnational seed transfer. Thus, present policy and regeneration practise prevent CC adaptation resulting in lower stability and productivity of future forests. Because all countries in CE are too restricted in size to handle the expected shift of climate and the necessary transfer of seed material, transnational cooperation is urgently required. Main objective of SUSTREE is the promotion of CC adaptation of forest ecosystems by fostering and enabling transnational adaptive management of forest genetic resources. Based on only nationally available knowledge of the tree species distribution and adaptive capacity, SUSTREE results in harmonized maps and guidelines for transnational seed transfer in CC and a common access to the national registers of forest reproductive material. Pilot applications in state forest enterprises will document the usability of the introduced tools for forest and natural resource managers as well as for policy makers and public bodies responsible for restoration and forest reforestation schemes.

Project goals

SUSTREE aims at harmonizing the forest genetic resource use and transfer on basis of information on tree species distributions under present and future climate conditions and on the available knowledge of the adaptive genetic diversity of trees. This will results into transnational delineation models for genetic conservation and forest seed deployment zones in climate change. Based on European legislation, the project aims at establishing transnational access to National registers within a common language and platform.

Characteristics of the project

Main objective is the promotion of CC adaptation of forest ecosystems in CE by fostering and enabling transnational adaptive management of forest genetic resources. The utilisation of the tree species genetic variation is one of the most promising strategies of adaptive management of forests in CC, as it allows conserving the existing species and associated plant/animal communities and the integrity of ecosystem services. Today, neither European and national policies nor regional and local recommendations for seed use and regeneration consider the challenges of CC. Also, national policies and the difficult exchange of data on forest reproductive material impede the utilisation of the best genetic resources and the transfer across national boundaries and thus increase the vulnerability of genetic resources in CC.

Thematic Work Packages of the project:

Scope of IBL participation

• WP T1 – Harmonization of tree genetic resource use and transfer adapted to changing climate conditions – the IBL will contribute its national expertise and data on provenance and breeding research. and its interest is mostly oriented for the database linked to data of the present and the predicted climate and the delineations and should results into a web-based information system.
• WP T2 – Transnational access to forest genetic resources and building a policy for sustainable use of FRM – the IBL will coordinate the contribution of the Polish National register (e.g. provenance, testing trials) and support the homogenization of data descriptors experimenting trials and models scenarios for climate change
• WP T3 – Promoting climate change adaptation for forest ecosystems by implementing new seed transfer models with forest companies and conservation managers as pilot applications – IBL will provide documentation for the Polish National forests and make sure that the results are being disseminated to national stakeholders.

Project contractors

Department of Silviculture and Genetics of Forest Trees, Forest Research Institute (IBL), Poland, Braci Leśnej 3 str., Sękocin Stary, 05-090 Raszyn tel. +48 22 7150 470, fax. +48 22 7150 313

Partners