GROUP DESCRIPTION

Group Description

ForWild is a new research group originally integrated into the former Forest Ecology (FORECOL) group. ForWild addresses forest and wildlife ecology and, particularly, how management may affect ecosystem ecology. For example, a strong line of research relates to the effects of ungulate herbivores on the ecology of ecosystems, namely forests and ecosystem responses to this group of animals. This may provide opportunities to use ungulates as habitat management tools, namely wildfire prevention, and relate strongly with the Fire Ecology research group (FirEcol).

At another level, the ForWild group also investigates how sustainable forest management may affect forest ecology and conservation, namely forest structure and regeneration, as well as conservation of biodiversity and ecosystem services. Research on forest dynamics has been done both in pure and mixed forests, with local and introduced species, at landscape and national levels.

Ongoing European projects on harmonizing National Forest Inventories (NFIs) to address forest conservation assessment and monitoring are generating first research outputs. ForWild has developed strong partnerships with stakeholders, both at national and international level. Examples are the partnership with the Mediterranean Program of the World Wide Fund for Nature, a global non-governmental conservation organization, and partnerships with National Forest Producers Associations that use research outputs produced by ForWild. For example, work on identifying and mapping important areas for the conservation of forest biodiversity and of ecosystem services contributed to implement payment for ecosystems services (PES) schemes in oak woodlands.

Finally, ForWild group also investigates the importance of forest habitat types for the conservation and management of endangered species, such as the Iberian lynx (e.g. MODELYNX project) or the European Turtle-dove.

Team

Publications

Projects

Student Supervisions