Delegates from around the world meet to explore ways to boost forest education.
22 June 2021, Rome - Today sees the start of the International Conference on Forest Education<http://www.fao.org/forestry/forest-education/conference/en/> - a three-day event to shine a light on the important role forest education plays in maximizing the contributions of forests and trees to the Sustainable Development Goals and in overcoming the growing disconnect between people, nature and forests.
Over a thousand experts are attending the conference, which is organized by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), the International Tropical Timber Organizations (ITTO) and the International Union of Forest Research Organizations (IUFRO), CIFOR-ICRAF and the Secretariats of the UN Forum on Forests and UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, with support from Germany.
The results of a global survey on forest education at all levels - from primary schools to universities - will be announced at the conference, which builds on a year-long effort by the FAO-ITTO-IUFRO Global Forest Education Project<http://www.fao.org/forestry/forest-education/en/> to collect, synthesise and verify the status of forest education.
"Forests are vital for combatting climate change, for the livelihoods of forest-dependent people, and for providing a secure future for generations to come," said FAO Deputy-Director General Maria-Helena Semedo. "Yet around the world, the environmental, societal and economic importance of forests is being overlooked. We urgently need to revitalize forest education so more people come to value forests for the vital natural resource they are."
The conference aims to help chart a path forward for forest education globally. Delegates including policy-makers, forest educators and forestry students will review the three pillars of forest education and knowledge: formal forest education; non-formal and informal education; and traditional and indigenous knowledge systems.
Themes that will be tackled include addressing gender and ethnicity in forest education; tailoring forest education to the needs of the job market; bringing forests into the lives of primary and secondary schoolchildren; improving the quality of forest education at tertiary level; redressing out-dated perceptions of forest careers through strategic communications; and tapping into digital opportunities to strengthen forest education.
New digital tools to improve forest education
Two new digital tools, which will help drive forward improvements in forest education, will also be unveiled at the conference.
forestra is a new online gateway to global forest education which has been created under the leadership of IUFRO as part of a joint project with FAO-IUFRO-ITTO. forestra will store and facilitate sharing of information on tertiary education, technical and vocational education and training (both short and long-term), and forest-related public environmental education.
"As the world becomes more digitally connected, the opportunity for online resource access grows", said IUFRO President John Parrotta. "The forestra platform has been developed to facilitate this access to knowledge and information related to forest education through an innovative user-friendly search function. It will create connections between education, training and forest-related environmental awareness initiatives at all levels around the world."
In addition, a free online course on Legal and Sustainable Supply Chains (LSSC)<https://lsscourse.com/course/> in the timber industry, developed under the leadership of ITTO, will help support several audiences, including businesses, to meet market requirements.
"The livelihoods of millions of people around the world depend on timber, but these are increasingly under threat from illegal and unsustainable practices," said Steve Johnson, Officer-in-charge, ITTO. "This course will help entrepreneurs, forestry professionals, government officials and students understand best practices in the timber industry while also helping to contribute to the Sustainable Development Goals."
Delegates will be invited to endorse a Call to Action on Forest Education at the end of the conference that outlines key actions to strengthen forest education, training and knowledge sharing. The Call to Action will be open online for endorsement by others after the conference.
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Related links
International Conference on Forest Education<http://www.fao.org/forestry/forest-education/conference/en/>
Global Forest Education Project<http://www.fao.org/forestry/forest-education/en/>
forestra [link when live]
Online course on Legal and Sustainable Supply Chains (LSSC)<https://lsscourse.com/course/> [link when live]
Dear colleagues,
I would like to forward a message regarding our recent paper on a global review of forest biomass harvesting guidelines. On behalf of all authors, I wish you a stimulating read!
With best wishes,
Viktor Bruckman
Good day,
A recently published, open-access review paper led by Dr. Brian Titus, research scientist from the Pacific Forestry Centre in Victoria, British Columbia, might be of interest to you:
Titus, B.D., Brown, K., Helmisaari, H-S., Vanguelova, E., Stupak, I., Evans, A., Clarke, N., Guidi, C., Bruckman, V. J., Varnagiryte-Kabasinskiene, I., Kęstutis Armolaitis, K., de Vries, W., Hirai, K., Kaarakka, L., Hogg, K., and Reece, P. 2021. Sustainable forest biomass: a review of current residue harvesting guidelines. Energy, Sustainability and Society 11:10, published on April 14, 2021.
Available at https://energsustainsoc.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s13705-021-00281… and DOI: 10.1186/s13705-021-00281-w
This topical review of forest biomass harvesting guidelines was completed by 16 authors from 11 countries, covering 43 jurisdictions in North America, Europe and Southeast Asia. Uniquely, the international team included information from guidelines from France, the Netherlands, Denmark, Finland, Lithuania and Japan that are not available in English - and hence may be of particular interest. (The review is an outcome of an OECD-sponsored workshop and thus relevant forest management manuals were reviewed in several cases where workshop participants were from jurisdictions that do not yet have specific forest biomass harvesting guidelines.) Below my signature is a list of authors and affiliations.
Of particular interest to some readers will be access to the raw data (i.e., consisting of direct quotations from original documents), included within a spreadsheet. This allows readers to explore the raw data and generate their own conclusions, or search for information relevant to their own interests, be this scientific research, policy-oriented questions, guideline development, forest management ideas, or any other topics of relevance to them. It is an aspiration of the authors that the spreadsheet of data be a publicly available "living" or "evergreen" document (courtesy of the Forest Stewards Guild) that can be updated or corrected as new guidelines are published - directions for contacting the Guild are in the spreadsheet. If you have general queries, please contact me and I will forward your message to Dr. Titus; if you notice errors or omissions in the raw data in the spreadsheet, or if you are aware of specific forest biomass guidelines that have inadvertently been overlooked, please contact Zander Evans or Inge Stupak - their contact information is in the main spreadsheet.
The review also contains a second spreadsheet with recommendations from past guideline reviews - to "give credit where credit is due", give readers direct access to exactly what past reviewers said, and to show how past recommendations were summarized by authors. As with raw guideline data, it is the hope of the authors that especially agencies developing their own guidelines will find this format helpful to their work.
A "blog" on this review for readers of the range of BMC (Biomed Central) journals may be of interest to you, or useful for sharing information about this paper with a general audience. "Helping ensure that forest bioenergy is environmentally sustainable" can be found at
http://blogs.biomedcentral.com/on-physicalsciences/2021/04/15/forest-bioene…
Finally, please note that this review paper is part of a special issue of ESSO on Governing sustainability of bioenergy, biomaterial and bioproduct supply chains from forest and agricultural landscapes, edited by Inge Stupak, Tat Smith and Nicholas Clarke. This issue may contain related articles of interest to you regarding sustainability and governance mechanisms for forest bioenergy. The open-access issue is available at https://www.biomedcentral.com/collections/sbbb
I hope you enjoy this comprehensive and timely review, and find it adds value to your work. I look forward to receiving your feedback.
Kind regards,
Winnifred Hays-Byl
Director, Forest Innovation and Dynamics
Pacific Forestry Centre, Natural Resources Canada
Email: winnifred.hays-byl(a)canada.ca<mailto:winnifred.hays-byl@canada.ca>
Cell: 778-535-4182
Authors:
* Brian Titus, Natural Resources Canada, Victoria, BC, Canada (now retired)
* Kevin Brown, Natural Resources Canada, Victoria, BC, Canada (now at K.R. Brown and Associates)
* Heljä-Sisko Helmisaari, University of Helsinki, Finland
* Elena Vanguelova, Forest Research, Surrey, UK
* Inge Stupak, University of Copenhagen, Denmark
* Alexander Evans, Forest Stewards Guild, New Mexico, USA
* Nicholas Clarke, Norwegian Institute of Bioeconomy Research, Norway
* Claudia Guidi, Swiss Federal Institute for Forest, Snow and Landscape Research, Switzerland
* Viktor J. Bruckman, Austrian Academy of Sciences (ÖAW), Austria
* Iveta Varnagiryte-Kabasinskiene, Lithuanian Research Centre for Agriculture and Forestry, Lithuania
* Kęstutis Armolaitis, Lithuanian Research Centre for Agriculture and Forestry, Lithuania
* Wim de Vries, Wageningen University and Research, the Netherlands
* Keizo Hirai, Forestry and Forest Products Research Institute, Japan
* Lilli Kaarakka, California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo, CA, USA
* Karen Hogg, Natural Resources Canada, Victoria, BC, Canada
* Pam Reece, Natural Resources Canada, Victoria, BC, Canada (now at Stantec, Sidney, BC)
Dr. Viktor Bruckman
Austrian Academy of Sciences
Dr. Ignaz Seipel-Platz 2
1010 Vienna, Austria
Voice: +43-1-51581-3200
Mobile: +43 664 6127259
Email: viktor.bruckman(a)oeaw.ac.at<mailto:viktor.bruckman@oeaw.ac.at>
Web: http://www.oeaw.ac.at/kioes/
Dear IUFRO FRIENDS
Please consider attending the upcoming FABI International Seminar (29th April at 16h00 GMT +2) to be presented by Dr Andrew (Sandy) Liebhold. Sandy is very well known to the IUFRO Community having (for example) served Division 7 (Tree Health) Co-ordinator and Chair of the Scientific Committee for our 125th Anniversary Congress in Freiburg in 2017. If you are interested in tree health, biological invasions or forests and forestry in general - this will be a seminar for you to enjoy.
To attend, it is necessary to register -please do so at https://www.fabinet.up.ac.za/index.php/event/FABISerminarSeries/
Background information on Sandy’s talk can be found below and details of the FABI International Seminar Series is on the web site above.
Best regards
Mike
[signature_678126525]
April, 2021
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Speaker: Dr Andrew Liebhold, US Forest Service Northern Research Station, Morgantown, WV USA
Title: Macroecology of Insect Invasions
Date: 29 April 2021 Time: 16:00 (GMT+2)
Abstract: Biological invasions are largely an unintended consequence of globalization. With increasing mobility, humans have accidentally transported organisms around the world, breaking the geographical boundaries that separated species ranges that persisted for millions of years of evolution. Among animals, the insecta is the most species-rich class, with thousands of insect species having been established outside of their native ranges and many of these species causing immense impacts on agriculture, human health and conservation of native ecosystems. Here, I report on a macroecological analysis of historical insect invasions spanning 300 years and 10 world regions. These data are used to compare frequencies of invasions among different insect orders and among different insect families. Species-area relationships for native insect assemblages are generally stronger than for non-native insect assemblages. Certain groups, such as the Hemiptera, Formicidae and the Staphylinidae are generally over-represented in non-native insect assemblages, while other taxa are under-represented. These patterns generally reflect characteristics of these insects that cause them to enter important invasion pathways and biological characteristics that facilitate invasions. These results ultimately allow us to better understand the socio-economic drivers of insect invasions and can be of use when conducting invasive pest risk analysis.
Biography: Andrew “Sandy” Liebhold has been a research entomologist with the US Forest Service Northern Research Station, Morgantown, WV USA since 1988. His research focuses on the ecology and management of biological invasions and the spatial dynamics of insect outbreaks. Liebhold received his PhD in Entomology from the University of California, Berkeley in 1984 and worked as a postdoctoral at the University of Massachusetts before joining the Forest Service. He is a fellow of the AAAS and serves on the editorial board of the journals Population Ecology and Biological Invasions. He also currently serves as a scientific coordinator with the Faculty of Forestry and Wood Science, Czech University of Life Sciences Prague and a visiting scholar with Scion Research in New Zealand.
This message and attachments are subject to a disclaimer.
Please refer to http://upnet.up.ac.za/services/it/documentation/docs/004167.pdf for full details.
Von: Sheila Ward <mahoganyforthefuture(a)gmail.com>
Gesendet: Mittwoch, 24. März 2021 00:04
Betreff: Join the e-list for IUFRO Working Party 4.02.01 Resource Data in the Tropics
Dear Colleagues:
You are invited to join the e-list for IUFRO Working Party 4.02.01 Resource Data in the Tropics, at https://lists.iufro.org/mailman/listinfo/wp40201/ We are focusing the unit on the discovery, curation, and use of legacy tropical forest datasets.
Much legacy data for tropical forests, including inventory and plot data, are in danger of being lost. Many tropical forest projects over the years have generated data, but the information is scattered among different institutions and people, some still only on paper, some digitized but in older formats.
These legacy datasets are invaluable for understanding how tropical forests change through time, including the cumulative impacts of land use and climate, and changes in patterns of biodiversity. change in land use and climate, and changes in patterns of biodiversity and carbon storage. Many of the forests represented in historical datasets no longer exist, so these data are the only record of the natural vegetation of the area.
There is also a need to develop a set of standard descriptive metadata, or a metadata scheme, for describing these datasets. This would assist not only with recovering and describing old data sets, but also ensure that future datasets can be consistently described and that their loss can be avoided in the future.
The first step is to review datasets referred to in older meta databases (e.g., ATROFI-UK and TROPIS) to determine if they are still available, and if they are in need of updated electronic curation. We are also reaching out via electronic media and networks, to find additional legacy tropical datasets and information on these studies. The next steps will be to develop an updated metadatabase regarding these datasets, develop with stakeholders policy on ownership and appropriate use, seek funding, and electronically curate such datasets.
We invite your participation in the e-list to discuss these and related topics.
IUFRO 4.02.01 Coordination Team
https://www.iufro.org/science/divisions/division-4/40000/40200/40201/
Colleagues,
Please find below the announcement of the upcoming NEW High Level Conference dedicated to the New European Bauhaus on 8 April, 2021. Please feel free to register and share widely with those who might be interested in promoting the Wood in Construction!
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PRESS RELEASE
The New European Bauhaus: wood sector sets out its stall
wood4bauhaus Virtual Conference Thursday 8 April 2021
Keynote address to be given by top adviser to EU Commission President
"A mastermind of the Bauhaus"
In her call for a New European Bauhaus<https://europa.eu/new-european-bauhaus/index_en> movement, EC President Ursula von der Leyen has proposed that wood can play a key role in transforming the built environment into a carbon sink[1]. Central to her thinking is Professor Hans-Joachim Schellnhuber of the Potsdam-Institute for Climate Impact Research in Germany, who has recently been named as an ambassador for the New European Bauhaus High-level Roundtable<https://europa.eu/new-european-bauhaus/about/high-level-roundtable_en> and who will deliver the keynote address of the first conference of the Wood4Bauhaus Alliance.
Welcoming the President's inspirational new initiative, the European wood-based sector launched the Wood Sector Alliance for the New European Bauhaus (Wood4Bauhaus.eu) to establish an open platform of stakeholders. This newly established sectoral alliance is initiated by several umbrella organisations: the InnovaWood EU network for wood research, innovation and education, the European Wood-Based Panel Federation (EPF), the European Confederation of Woodworking Industries (CEI-Bois), the European Federation of Building and Woodworkers (EFBWW) and the European Organisation of the Sawmill Industry (EOS). It has also the support of the Horizon 2020 project consortia BASAJAUN and WoodCircus.
wood4bauhaus.eu<http://www.wood4bauhaus.eu> intends to become an active Partner of the New European Bauhaus and, as a first initiative, will hold on 8 April 2021 a Virtual Conference on how the wood sector can contribute to the new Bauhaus.
Wood is an extremely versatile natural material and a circular material par excellence. Long-life products using wood can store carbon for decades or even centuries in buildings and living spaces. The conference aims to raise awareness of the transformative power of the Circular Economy, put a spotlight on the versatility of innovative wood-based products and building systems, and propose dedicated co-creation partnerships with the wood sector for the New European Bauhaus.
As highlighted by Mr Clive Pinnington, EPF Managing Director: "Wood and wood-based panel products are natural, sustainable and climate positive. They offer multiple benefits including energy efficient construction and innovative furniture materials and are therefore a perfect fit for the objectives of the New European Bauhaus".
In the words of Mr Paul Brannen, Head of Public Affairs for CEI-Bois & EOS and a former MEP: "We are delighted that Professor Schellnhuber, one of the brains behind the new Bauhaus, has agreed to address our conference which will highlight the key role wood can play in tackling climate change, providing affordable housing and bringing beauty into our built environment".
Dr Uwe Kies, Secretary-General of InnovaWood, underlines: "The New European Bauhaus is a great opportunity for companies, researchers and students in the wood sector to become part of this transformative movement. Joining our forces and knowledge we can co-create climate-friendly solutions and literally build a more sustainable future for our cities and rural areas. We welcome all who wish to take this first step with us".
Mr Tom Deleu, General Secretary of the European Federation of Building and Woodworkers (EFBWW) pointed out: "The alliance will demonstrate that more building and renovation with wood will contribute to the EU's ambition to turn the building sector into a carbon sink. It will also be demonstrated with plenty of examples that climate friendly and energy-efficient buildings can be attractive and comfortable and, the sector can also be a driver for quality jobs in rural areas."
Speakers include architects, designers, industry representatives, researchers and policymakers. For more information, the complete programme of the conference and registration please visit the conference website: wood4bauhaus.eu<http://www.Wood4Bauhaus.eu>
Brussels, 11 March 2021
(c) 2021 Wood Sector Alliance for the New European Bauhaus
Contact: info(a)wood4bauhaus.eu<mailto:info@wood4bauhaus.eu> | Web: wood4bauhaus.eu<http://www.Wood4Bauhaus.eu>
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[1] State of the Union Address 2020, 16/09/2020<https://ec.europa.eu/info/sites/info/files/soteu_2020_en.pdf>
