Assessment of initial situtation of restoration areas

In SUPERB 12 demo areas across Europe carry out restoration measures to make an effort to tackle a variety of stressors and challenges. The restoration measures across the demo areas differ due to the nature of forest diversity and social-economic diversity. Each challenge and objective need a different set of measures to develop a desired state of the forest. In order to assess the success of the restoration both in short- and long-term, a consistent monitoring needs to be carried out. This deliverable describes design setup and methodology for monitoring protocol of the initial situation assessments per demo. Given methodology of the initial assessment, the current state of forest is identified by assessing starting point before and in some cases right after the restoration measures are taken, describing the current state of the forests and restored areas. Detailed planning of the restoration measures is included in the demo workplans. Without knowing the current state of the forest prior to the restoration, it is difficult to evaluate the effectiveness of the restoration measures conducted in each demo. Given that the circumstances in the demo areas vary, the sampling designs are adjusted for the demo needs. In this deliverable it is not the aim to analyse the results of the initial measurements.