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Towards AN OBSERVATORY
FOR THE RESILIENCE OF
EUROPEAN FORESTS

Funded by

the European Union

WHAT IS FORWARDS?

FORWARDS is an EU-funded project that will prototype the ForestWard Observatory, a pan-European monitoring and evaluation tool that will help in demonstrating the impact of climate change on forests, guiding decision-making for practical forests management.

 

DISCOVER THE PROJECT

NETWORKS OF CSF PILOT SITES AND SUPERSITES

A Europe-wide network of pilot and supersites advancing forest monitoring and climate resilience

 

the ForestWard Observatory

Third party grants

FORWARDS will offer 50 grants for setting up of the ForestWard Observatory and supporting the implementation and scaling-up of climate-smart restoration pilots.

 

LEARN MORE AND APPLY

LATEST UPDATES

FORWARDS at the Forest Dialogue in Basel: connecting forest monitoring, science and practice

News release

– 17-09-2026

The project presents its flagship monitoring and evaluation tool, the ForestWard Observatory, to the forest community and gathers their feedback.

The Meaning of Climate-Smart Forestry – A Narrative Literature Review

News release

– 29-07-2026

Climate-smart forestry (CSF) is gaining attention as forests are increasingly expected to support climate action while remaining resilient, biodiverse, and socially relevant. This review shows that the concept brings mitigation, adaptation, and the social dimension into a single discussion, but it is understood in different ways across the scientific literature.

Swiss Forests Under Pressure: Declining Growth Across All Altitudes

News release

– 14-05-2026

Forests play a crucial role in absorbing CO₂ from the atmosphere — but this capacity cannot be taken for granted. A new study published in Functional Ecology (Etzold et al., 2026) draws on 30 years of continuous forest monitoring at 18 sites across Switzerland, spanning elevations from lowland forests at 500 m up to mountain forests near the treeline at almost 1,900 m. The result is one of the most comprehensive long-term assessments of how climate change is affecting forest growth in Central Europe.
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