Workshop: Field-based research arenas within WIFORCE

What is the aim of the arena(s)?

The arena serves as a platform where researchers from diverse disciplines collaborate with stakeholders from authorities and industry to generate knowledge addressing future challenges in forestry. These challenges include enhancing climate resilience, increasing productivity, and conserving biodiversity.

The arena is organized into different themes, which may be either project-based or focused on a shared management approach or experimental setup. Regardless of structure, the main goal of all themes is to foster collaboration, strengthen interactions, and promote knowledge exchange among participants.

What kind of support can the arena provide?

The arena offers two main types of support:

1. Infrastructure support:

   The arena can support the development and maintenance of research infrastructure, such as the collection of baseline or descriptive data from experimental sites. This type of support should facilitate collaboration among researchers working on more specialized projects. It may include funding for essential data collection and analysis that underpins multiple research initiatives.

   There are also opportunities for stakeholders to contribute “in kind”, for example, by providing equipment, conducting logging operations, or assisting with data collection (e.g., productivity measurements or laser scanning). Note that supported infrastructure or experiments must be of broad relevance and benefit/interest multiple partners within the arena, including researchers, authorities, and industry stakeholders.

2. Joint research projects:

   The arena may also support collaborative projects involving researchers and partners from authorities or industry. In these cases, the arena can contribute to specific tasks or projects where multidisciplinary teams work together to address a defined research question or problem, advancing knowledge through joint efforts.

How long will the support last?

The program last 5 years, but with potential continuation after that depending on success and usefulness of the project. However, some supported projects can be shorter.

How much funding is available to support the arena projects?

Over 5 years, the budget to support Arena projects will be 63 Mkr “in cash” plus 17 Mkr “in kind” from stakeholders. The budget for individual projects will be determined by how many research groups and stakeholders that are involved and the requirement for sampling and analysis costs. The goal is to support a range of different projects in order to support interactions between many research groups and stakeholders.

Are WIFORCE-supported PhD students required to be part of the projects?

Involvement of WIFORCE PhD students is a plus, but not a requirement. The goal is a broad participation of research groups, not only those already receiving WIFORCE support.

What type of projects and sites may receive support?

To be eligible for support, a project or site must meet several key criteria:

• Broad relevance: The project or site should address research questions or include treatments that are of interest to multiple collaborators. Preference is given to initiatives involving a consortium of researchers alongside representatives from authorities and industry, rather than projects limited to a single researcher and partner.

• Scientific robustness: When experimental studies will be used, the design must be statistically sound, with sufficient replication of treatments, or well-designed gradient studies. Ideally, studies should span more than one biogeographical region to ensure broader applicability and avoid purely local relevance.

• Operational scale: Treatments should, where possible, be implemented at a scale relevant to practical forest management (e.g., hectares rather than square meters). This is important both for assessing operational feasibility and for enabling meaningful analysis of biodiversity responses, which are often not adequately captured in small-plot experiments.

What role will I have if my site is selected as an arena site?

If your site is selected, you will collaborate with the arena leadership and take responsibility for planning, data collection, and data storage in accordance with the agreed proposal. You will need to agree to an open data and infrastructure accessibility policy so that it can be used by other researchers and groups. As such, you will continue to play an important role in supporting other researchers by providing information about the site and help facilitate access to both the site and its data. This helps ensure long-term usability and maximizes the value of the research infrastructure.

What is the difference between, and the link to, the Unit for Field-based Forest Research (UFR)?

The main difference is that arena sites are managed and supported within the WIFORCE joint venture initiative and emphasize a more active collaboration between researchers and external stakeholders. There may, however, be strong links to UFR. Arena sites may overlap with or be included among UFR-managed sites, and some data collection activities may be carried out by UFR personnel. Involvement of UFR in arena site management is both supported and encouraged.

This collaboration also presents an opportunity to further develop the unit’s expertise, expanding its capacity to handle a broader range of data collection methods than currently practiced.

Do I have to participate in the Field Arena Workshop in Stockholm on April 23 in order to be considered for an Arena project?

No, the goal of the Workshop is to serve as a “matchmaking” event where researchers and stakeholder can “pitch” and discuss ideas for Arena experiments in order to identify common interests and possibilities for collaborations. However, these discussions and interactions can of course also take place outside of the workshop.

What happens after the workshop?

A call will be made for Arena project proposals. These proposals will have to outline the proposed experiments, the involvement of different research groups and a clear stakeholder involvement together with a proposed budget. The proposals will then be evaluated and prioritized together with KAW for how well they fulfil the goals of the Arena concept.

The landscape-based Krycklan research infrastructure will bring together researchers from numerous scientific disciplines and stakeholders representing various interest groups. The aim is to increase synergy and interaction between ecosystem research, forest management and technological development. 

Research topics include, for example, forest landscape processes and growth dynamics, soil function and health, water dynamics and protection, biodiversity and forest management, greenhouse gas uptake and emissions, as well as map development and new AI technologies. Several of these areas will lead to excellent research individually,  but the impact could be further enhanced through increased integration and interdisciplinary approaches.

Example of areas of support the arena will offer:

• Studies on climate impact on tree growth, carbon balance and water availability linked to atmospheric conditions, management history and soil conditions.
• Interaction of forest growth, drought, and global warming on tree ecophysiology, root development, and carbon sequestration using both empirical and experimental approaches. 
• Optimizing peatland management to balance climate benefits, biodiversity, and water regulation in relation to forestry and rewetting.
• Improve the understanding of biodiversity functionality in managed and unmanaged forest landscape using traditional and new technological tools.
• Developing new landscape maps for better protection of soils, water, biodiversity and optimize trafficability.

The arena will include experiments on biodiversity responses to new silvicultural practices to support the development of future forest management.

The aim is to establish an experimental infrastructure and generate descriptive data that facilitate new collaborations and increase opportunities to secure funding for projects addressing more specific research questions. The goal is to include treatments that stakeholders perceive as potential future practices, but for which we currently lack basic knowledge of whether they can meet future demands. An additional goal is to promote well-replicated, large-scale experiments that spans more than one region, and addressing a multitude of research topics at the same sites. 

Example of an infrastructure and support by the arena:

Shelterwood logging as an alternative to clear-cut rotation forestry. Well-replicated experimental treatments (n=10) with sites in different regions (e.g. Norrland, Svealand and Götaland). Stand-scale treatments that are representative for the operational harvest units of the region (ranging from ca 2 ha in the south to ca 5-10 ha in the north). 

The Arena supports the collection of baseline data enabling before–after–control–impact (BACI) studies. Data collection may include measurements of tree productivity, standing timber volume, canopy openness, vegetation composition, high-resolution laser scanning (air- and ground-based), soil sampling, insect sampling, and microclimate data (temperature and soil moisture).

Data collection will be repeated over time, and individual projects addressing more specific questions may use these data to support their own research, develop new research questions, and facilitate new collaborations around shared themes.

Stakeholders may be involved through execution of harvest operations, provision of expertise on operational silvicultural practices, assistance with parts of the data collection, and contribution of machine and stand-level database information

The arena will bring together researchers and stakeholders in field-based research projects aimed at understanding the genetic basis for tree growth, wood quality, adaptation and resilience, and how this knowledge can be used for breeding a new generation of better adapted trees with improved quality.

An example of how one can think around a possible field-based arena project involving wide array of researchers and stakeholder (there are many other alternative scenarios):

From stump to sawmill:

• Using mature Skogforsk progeny trials, ready for harvest, one could investigate how to: 
  • Connect the individual tree genetics to growth and resilience (tree ring analysis) taking environmental factors like soils, water and climate into account.
  • Develop techniques to match a certain log to a certain tree stump with an exact location and then trace the log all the way to the sawmill where wood quality data can be extracted. Utilizing harvester data to the full extent.
  • The same could be done in commercial plantations with seedlings derived from a known seed orchard to also develop methods to include information about other traits such as diseases, stand composition, genetic diversity etc.
• Methods would have to be developed to integrate all these different sources of data into models to describe tree growth and adaptation and into genomic selection models for breeding a new generation of climate adapted, resilient trees with superior properties.
• The Arena project could combine expertise in genetics, breeding, forest technology, ecophysiology, soil and water, pathogens, silviculture, remote sensing, maps and wood properties, including many of the WIFORCE PhD students.
• Participation of stakeholders such as forest companies, Skogforsk, machine builders, sawmills etc.