TRANZFOR

The project aims at strengthening research partnerships through staff exchanges and networking activities between 3 European research organisations from France, Portugal and United Kingdom, and 2 organisations from Australia and New Zealand. TRANZFOR addresses scientific issues related to “forestry and climate change”. It is based on a 4 years coordinated joint programme of exchange of researchers for short periods (2 to 12 months), thus providing mobility possibilities to individual researchers and support to research organisations to establish and reinforce long-term research co-operation. The project has developed on the basis of active bilateral cooperation between individual countries and partners which has occurred in the past decade. The IRSES scheme provides a unique opportunity to integrate those past collaboration activities into a coherent programme addressing an issue of high priority on the political agenda of EU, New Zealand and Australia. The programme of exchange is focused on forests, forestry and climate change interactions, including assessment of impacts of climate change on forest ecosystem functioning and development of adaptation and mitigation strategies for forest management.

The TRANZFOR exchange scheme strengthened research partnerships through staff exchanges and networking activities between 3 European research organisations from France, Portugal and United Kingdom, and 2 organisations from Australia and New Zealand. TRANZFOR addressed scientific issues related to “forestry and climate change”. The project developed rapidly thanks to previous active bilateral cooperation between individual countries and partners. The IRSES scheme provided a unique opportunity to integrate those past collaboration activities into a coherent programme addressing issues of high priority on political agendas of EU, New Zealand and Australia. The programme of exchange focused on forests ecosystems, forestry and climate change interactions, including assessment of impacts of climate change on forest ecosystem functioning and development of adaptation and mitigation strategies for forest management. Specific topics were defined for each exchange and concerned five major research domains: tree genomics and breeding, forest models, ecosystem services,risks assessment and management, bioenergy. The range of common tree species of interest and of climatic conditions, as well as the strategic importance of planted forests in the 5 partner countries involved, provided a coherent framework and socio-economic background for the different research activities as well as the different dissemination activities that were conducted.