European long-term research for sustainable forestry: Experimental and monitoring assets at the ecosystem and landscape level. Part 2: ENFORS Field Facilities
During the period 2001-2003, the COST Action E25 (European Network for long-term Forest Ecosystem and Landscape Research, ENFORS) conducted a European survey of forest field research and monitoring facilities. The survey was carried out as national inventories (Annex 1). The overall aim was to make a pan-European inventory of valuable forest field research and monitoring facilities dedicated research related to sustainable forest management (Marell et al. 2003, 2004). This report (TR 4) gives the scientific context to the network of ENFORS Field Facilities. It is composed of introductory papers giving a background to European forest field research and monitoring as well as discussing the potential use of this asset for research on sustainable development of forests and its surroundings. Individual presentations of the ENFORS Field Facilities are given in a separate booklet report. With the Technical Reports 3 and 4, we present the rich asset of field research and monitoring facilities that do exists within the scientific community on sustainable forest management (Part 1), as well as its potential use (Part 2), and to give the background by describing its historical development (Part 1). By making this information available to a broader audience we hope that these facilities will become better known among the scientific community as a whole as well as among policy makers and stakeholders, and thus be used to a greater extent than today and by a broader spectrum of disciplines than the pure forest oriented. These reports, and all information compiled under the umbrella of the ENFORS national inventories, would not have been possible without a dedicated work by the national coordinators and support of the many organisations and contact persons providing information on long-term forest ecosystem and landscape research and monitoring. We sincerely thank them all for a successful journey of rediscovering our hidden forest treasure. We are convinced of its great potential for future use for going towards a sustainable development of Europe's forests and forested landscapes.
