The purpose of this project is to pool the capacity of 12 institutes to face a transnational issue, namely adaptation to climate change impacts on Atlantic forests. The project will set up tools for monitoring climate change and its impact on the Atlantic coast and test the efficiency of adaptive measures.
The key objectives are to set up a network of new arboretums from Portugal to Scotland to monitor trends in mortality and growth of the most common European tree species under climate change, on a long term perspective. A further objective is to set up a network of demonstration sites equipped with automatic weather stations within forests at high risk of damage under climate change.
The project has held an initial event to focus and define the structure and integration of the different work packages and working groups.
Good progress has already been realised in some of the components of the project, establishing an infrastructure on adaptation of forest trees to climate change in the Atlantic European Area. For example the first steps of a long term trials of forest trees have already been completed. During 2010, data collected from Portugal, Spain, France and United Kingdom will be made accessible by an on-line application.
Other works have focused on the selection of the species that will be part of a network of arboreta, with a total of 33 units along the European Atlantic Area, from Portugal to Scotland; a total of 35 species have been selected for this network. During the weeks the final seed provenances for these 35 species will be decided.
The start of the REINFFORCE project also saw the launch of a new EFI regional office, the EFI Atlantic office. This is one of three Regional Offices that the European Forest Institute (EFI) has recently established across Europe. EFI Atlantic will provide services in the European Atlantic Area, including Portugal, Atlantic Spain and France, United Kingdom and Ireland. REINFFORCE project is an appropriate starting point from which to develop the synergies between EFI Atlantic and IEFC, since the project’s geographical scope covers a big share of the Atlantic Area of Europe and the theme of adaptation to climate change is a main issue for both organisations.
REINFFORCE is co-financed by the European Union programme FEDER-INTERREG IV Atlantic.
The project corresponds to Priority 2: Protect, secure and enhance the marine and coastal environment sustainability.
REINFFORCE was a 4-year project running from 2009 to 2013.
More information can be found at REINFFORCE web page. This communication platform has an open extranet facility accessible to the public and an intranet part for the use of the project members.