EUFORIA : European Forest Reserves Initiative

The EuFoRIa network was founded in 2019 to enhance the visibility and exploit the potential of the large number of long-term monitoring plots in European primeval forests and forest reserves. These plots and the data collected on them for multiple decades and often >50 years have a high potential for increasing our understanding of forest dynamics in a rapidly changing environment, and to provide the basis for better projections of future forest dynamics.

The goals of EuFoRIa are to:

- Foster networking among the researchers studying primeval forests and forest reserves using long-term data series of monitoring plots
- Get an overview of the existing data (such as number of plots, plot area, number of repeated measurements, environmental gradient covered)
- Identify research questions to which analyses of existing data could provide answers, discuss suitable approaches, analyse data and publish the results, building on the strengths of the plot network
- Foster exchange about inventory methods (design, variables, field procedures, data cleaning) and their long-term documentation
- Identify common interests in future research as a basis for new collaborations
- Work towards getting the network activities funded, e.g. via a COST Action or a Horizon Europe project