The European Union’s resolve for forest sustainability is driven by interconnected projects – MoniFun, PathFinder, SUPERB, FORWARDS, and ForestPaths – that work synergistically to address various aspects of forest management and climate resilience.
PathFinder develops a prototype of a European Forest Monitoring System by employing advanced remote sensing technologies and field data to generate high-resolution maps and accurate forest attribute estimates, ensuring precise reporting of EU greenhouse gas emissions and enhancing decision-making for sustainable forest management.
In parallel, the SUPERB project focuses on large-scale forest restoration across Europe, in alignment with the EU Green Deal. It engages with local communities, landowners, and stakeholders to implement and show case effective restoration practices.
FORWARDS contributes by developing the ForestWard Observatory, a pan-European tool that monitors the effects of climate change on forests. This observatory provides critical, up-to-date information to support climate-smart forestry and biodiversity restoration enhance forest management strategies, and ensure they adapt to evolving climatic conditions.
ForestPaths goal is to co-design holistic forest-based policy pathways, which include climate and biodiversity-smart forest management and wood use options for climate change mitigation, adaptation to climate change, biodiversity conversation and forest ecosystem services provisioning.
MoniFun is creating a blueprint for a comprehensive European Forest Multifunctionality Monitoring System, which provides a thorough framework to tackle climate change, and environmental stressors, and support biodiversity preservation. MoniFun acts as an umbrella-project that further develops the other project outcomes into a more comprehensive system with a strong focus on forest multifunctionality.
Together, MoniFun, PathFinder, SUPERB, FORWARDS and ForestPaths collectively contribute to the EU’s environmental goals by responding to the needs to monitor the various functions of European Forest Sector. This collaborative effort not only enhances forest health and resilience but also supports sustainable development and climate change mitigation across the continent as well as the forest and wood supply chains. Through their combined efforts, these projects are paving the way for healthier, more resilient forests, ensuring Europe’s ecosystem thrives for future generations.
FNR is managing the MoniFun projects’s stakeholder engagement using a multi-actor approach to meet diverse stakeholder needs, also handling Communication and Dissemination (CD) activities and external relations.
MoniFun is funded under the European Union’s Horizon Europe research and innovation programme under project no. 101134991
FNR contact: Vanaja Vankayalapati
