As one of four Climate Future Labs in Lower Saxony, the interdisciplinary FoResLab addresses the question: How can we make forests resilient to climate changes in current and future conditions?
On 10 February 2025, the members of FoResLab gathered in Göttingen for the official kickoff meeting. The event brought together researchers and practice partners, providing an opportunity to connect and exchange ideas.
The principal investigators of all 13 subprojects pitched their plans for the six-year Future Lab, followed by discussions with the key practice partners, including representatives from the National Park Harz, the Lower Saxony state forests, and the Göttingen Academy of Sciences and Humanities. In the afternoon, participants split into the three thematic platforms:
- The experimental platform, which derives indicators for the resilience of forests.
- The digital platform, which develops digital twins as well as an online forest water stress monitor.
- The societal platform, which identifies realistic pathways for designing resilient forests.
Subproject 11 – “Understanding stakeholders’ preferences and creating support for sustainable forest trajectories” – carried out by IUP researchers Prof. Dr. Ann-Kathrin Kößler and Lennart Stangenberg. This work is an integral part of the societal platform, which the IUP team also leads. The research will commence with a detailed mapping of relevant stakeholders, who are then interviewed about their perceptions, motivations, and barriers to forest transformation. Participatory workshops will serve as a tool for co-developing realistic pathways of forest transformation. Additionally, economic experiments will be employed to effectively quantify stakeholders’ preferences for specific forest traits and assess behavioral strategies to rally public support forest transformations.
Find out more about FoResLab and the IUP’s subproject here: FoResLab: Future Lab towards Forests Resilient to Climate Change – Institut für Umweltplanung – Leibniz University Hannover
