Forest Sciences Centre of Catalonia (CTFC)

The Forest Sciences Centre of Catalonia (CTFC) is a public institution in forest research, training and technology transfer based in Solsona (Lleida, Spain). With over 100 employes, it works in collaborative projects at regional, national and international level, with a strategic focus on the Mediterranean area. It is involved in different networks with international and national forestry institutions working on forest adaptation, risk mitigation and forest management (e.g. ARCMED, Collaborative Partnership for Mediterranean Forests, IUFRO). CTFC has played a key role in the creation of reference Mediterranean research initiatives: MEDFOREX (1998-2008, which led to the creation of EFIIMED), FORESPIR (since 1999) and CEMFOR (in 2014). On the other hand, CTFC participates in the tuition of PhD students to experienced researchers. In October 2015 it has been awarded with the HR Excellence in Research label from the European Commission (HRS4R). It is also particularly active in promoting and hosting seminars, dissemination activities addressed to the general public and sectoral actors. It has permanent collaboration with universities (U of Lleida, U. of Barcelona, Autonomous Univ. of Barcelona and U of Vic).

The work in NOBEL will be mainly implemented by the Landscape Dynamics and Biodiversity programme. The focus of the programme focuses on the development of forest ecosystem management models and decision support systems. The main objective is to develop scientifically sound methods that can be used by the public administration, forest owners, industry and non-governmental organizations for enhanced integration of adaptive strategies in multiple-objective forest management planning and for an improvement of existing policy and management approaches. This includes the development of innovative methods and tools that may address the complexity of multi-objective and multi-stakeholder forest planning under climate change and other risks (e.g. forest fires, pests). Research is conducted in the framework of 13 European and 4 national projects. This includes the coordination of projects such as (EFORWOOD, INTEGRAL and STAR TREE), participation in Action COSTS such as Cost Action FP0804 Forest Management Decision Support Systems – FORSYS (2010-2014), Cost Orchestrating forest-related policy analysis in Europe – ORHESTRA 2013-2015) and Marie Curie Actions (ForEAdapt and SuFoRun) . The research covers the evaluation of sustainable forest management practices (ForEAdapt), developing decision support systems for silvicultural planning and decision making (MOTIVE, ForEAdapt, SuFoRun), and applying multi criteria decision making methods (ForEAdapt, SuFoRun, Integral).

Main tasks in NOBEL

• Coordination of WP5 | Demonstrating business models for the provision of ES
• Developing Methods and Models to assess forest ES