Seminar: The role and potential of trees in agroforestry under a changing climate

How to increase carbon stocks and improve groundwater recharge with trees

Ulrik Ilstedt, researcher at the Department of Forest Ecology and Management, SLU.

The livelihoods of one-third of the world’s people are constrained by water availability. Despite many benefits, tree cultivation in such regions has been discouraged by the dominant hydrological paradigm that trees always reduce water availability. This contrasts with the popular view of forests as improving water availability.

The work Ulrik Ilstedt will present tries to reconcile these perspectives and show that an intermediate tree density maximized groundwater recharge in a agroforestry woodland in Burkina Faso. He will highlight the importance of assessing the generality of these results while arguing for unexplored opportunities of improving management of farmlands and forests for increased water availability in situations which are common across the seasonally dry tropics.

What we have achieved and what is the potential of fast-growing trees for agroforestry?

Patrick Worms, Senior Science Policy Advisor, World Agroforestry Centre

Patrick Worms, originally educated as a molecular geneticist, represents the world’s premier research institution devoted to the study of the roles of trees in agricultural landscapes to policy makers in Brussels and elsewhere in Europe. World Agroforestry, active since the 1970s, has reported on the astonishing benefits of multi-crop agriculture involving trees in thousands of peer-reviewed publications.

Due to not being able to participate in the seminar in person, Patrick has provided us with a talk recorded in October 2021 at the occasion of the 26th Session of the International Commission on poplars and other fast-growing trees sustaining people and the environment (IPC).