Managing Forests For Multiple Purposes Using Indicators Of The TRANSFORMIT Project
Photo by Stefanie Linser
This article features the EU-Horizon project TRANSFORMIT and the Integrative Forest Management Indicators developed within the project. It explores how Integrative Forest Management can help forests meet multiple, often competing demands. This article was first published in Forestry & Energy, Ireland’s practitioner magazine for the forestry and energy sectors.
"Managing Forests for Multiple Purposes Using Indicators of the TRANSFORMIT Project" is an article for practitioners explaining how IFM brings together biodiversity conservation, climate change adaptation, and the sustainable provision of ecosystem services within a single, coherent management approach. Rather than managing forests for one objective alone, IFM works with the natural diversity and dynamics of forests by combining different silvicultural approaches across a landscape, from actively managed timber stands to areas left to natural processes.
The article also introduces one of TRANSFORMIT's key outputs: a set of 17 scalable indicators developed to help translate the principles of integrative, multifunctional forest management into practice. Designed through a bottom-up, participatory process, these indicators give forest managers a practical way to monitor forest conditions, assess the effectiveness of management decisions, and apply IFM principles across different scales, from individual stands to national and European-level assessments.
- Integrative Forest Management
- Social & Stakeholder
- Landowners & Practitioners
- Planners & Implementers
- Climate change mitigation
- Risk mitigation and disturbance prevention
- Specific habitats (deadwood, microhabitats, habitat types,...)
- Structural diversity
- Tree species/functional diversity
- Wood and biomass production
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