Organised by

Universidade de Lisboa, Instituto Superior de Agronomia (ISA), Portugal

Contact persons

Ágata Lam; alam@isa.ulisboa.pt

Background

At present, forest management and, consequently, forest models face several challenges, either environmental (global change, mainly the climate change context), economic (increasing requirement of high quality wood products) or social (increasing use of forests for the general welfare of urban society and for the production of non-wood products such as fruits and mushrooms). Climate change is strongly affecting forests and this impact is expected to increase in the future. Extreme droughts, a series of severe storms and fires, pest and diseases outbreaks are becoming more and more frequent. At the same time society demands are also increasing and changing. On one side the development of societies is well correlated with the use of wood but, on the other side, developed and urbanized societies use forests for recreation purposes. These two objectives are most of the times in conflict and bring additional complexity to present forest management. Present growth models should be able to support forest management under this dynamic and complex environment.

In order to be used in practice, forest growth models must be implemented into user friend computer interfaces that, based on a set of forest models, make long term predictions of the status of the forests within a well-defined region under a certain scenario of climate, forest policy or management alternatives. Forest simulators usually predict, at each point in time, wood and non-wood products from the forest or region under study.

The course will use the SUBER, PINASTER and PINEA models as case studies of traditional growth and yield models and the 3PG model as case study of a management-oriented process-based forest growth model. The standsSIM forest simulator, applicable at stand, region or country level, will be used as an example of a computer interface that implements several forest growth models in the same interface.

Course organization

The course will include lectures, analysis of case studies and exercises (if possible with the students’ data). It will also include a field trip.
Margarida Tomé is the Course Coordinator.

Participants

The course is intended for professional foresters, forest consultants, forest managers and land owners, forestry policy makers, and postgraduate level students.

PROGRAMME

Credit for students

3 credits

Meals are not included. Lunches will be served at ISA Campus but the dinners on their own. During the field trip, lunch (sandwich and fruit) will be provided by the University. 

Traveling

The Instituto Superior de Agronomia (ISA) is located 12 km apart from Lisbon airport. Travel options are subway connection to the city center or bus to the School. Participants are expected to arrive on Sunday evening (December 9) and depart on Friday evening or Saturday (December 15).

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