Call for WIFORCE Arena Concepts

Application guidelines

The application process consists of two stages. In Stage 1, applicants submit a short concept description (maximum four A4 pages excluding references and CVs, 11 font Times New Roman written in English).

What to include

• A description of what type of support that is applied for.
• What partners /collaborators are involved (including both researchers and stakeholders) and their planned role.
• A description on how their concept contributes to the overall aim of the WIFORCE arena initiative. 
• An indicative budget and a description of what type of costs that is applied for. No details needed regarding overheads etc.
• One-page CVs for participating scientists including the 10 most relevant publications.

How to apply

Submit your application by email to Anke Carius (anke.carius@slu.se) no later than 12 June 2026.

Evaluation criteria

The application will be evaluated by the WIFORCE Steering Group based on the following criteria:

• Broad relevance: The project or site should address questions or include treatments that are of interest to multiple collaborators. Preference will be given to initiatives involving a consortium of researchers alongside representatives from authorities and industry.
• 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 for an example biodiversity response.

Next step

After evaluation a subset of projects and sites will be selected and invited to submit a more detailed application in Stage 2, deadline in September 2026.

About the call

The field research arena projects within WIFORCE are intended as shared, field-based research platforms where researchers and stakeholders can collaborate around common experiments, infrastructure and data to address a broad range of scientific questions relevant to future forest management.

The arena projects shall be able to serve as platforms where researchers from diverse disciplines collaborate with stakeholders from authorities and industry to generate knowledge addressing future challenges in forestry. These challenges include, for instance, enhancing climate resilience, increasing productivity, conserving biodiversity and support for other types of ecosystem services.

The arena projects will be organised into different themes, which may be either more 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.

 
Type of support

The arena may support collaborative infrastructure projects involving researchers and partners from authorities and industry by enabling new field-based experiments and analysis.

The arena primarily supports the development and maintenance of research infrastructure, including the collection of baseline or descriptive data from experimental sites. This type of support should facilitate collaboration among researchers working on more specialised projects and may include collection essential data and analysis that underpins multiple research initiatives.

Central to the Arena concept is to provide opportunities for stakeholders to contribute “in kind”, for example, by testing and providing equipment, conducting logging operations, or assisting with data collection (e.g., productivity measurements or laser scanning). Note that supported collaborations and infrastructures must be of broad relevance and benefit/interest multiple partners within the arena, including researchers, authorities, and industry stakeholders but the research conducted shall be fundamental rather than directly applied.

General information

Who can apply?

The main applicant must have a research employment at SLU’s Faculty of Forest Sciences. Involvement of WIFORCE PhD students is a plus, but not a requirement. The goal is a broad participation of research groups.

How long will the support last?

The current program funding span to 2030 but supported projects can be shorter. 

How much funding is available to support the arena projects?

Until 2030, the budget to support Arena projects will be approximately SEK 63 million “in cash” plus SEK 17 million “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 to facilitate interactions between many research groups and stakeholders.

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 within WIFORCE and SLU.

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 infrastructure and its data. This helps ensure long-term usability and maximizes the value of the research infrastructure.