Hello from IUFRO Division 4!
This is our second issue of the Division 4 newsletter and, as you will see, we have more information than in the inaugural issue. Thanks to everyone who provided material, and please keep sending Kristy ([email protected]) information, photos, scholarships and job opportunities, and links related to Division 4. This is a great opportunity to keep our members, as well as all of IUFRO, informed of our activities and accomplishments.

I want to bring your attention to a few matters that we will address in the coming months. Bianca Eskelson (Division 4 Deputy Coordinator) and I participated in the virtual IUFRO Enlarged Board meeting in September, during which these issues were raised. We then discussed these further with the Division 4 Research Group leaders in October.

First, we are continuing to discuss ways in which we can include opportunities for virtual participation in IUFRO conferences and meetings in the future. Obviously, the pandemic has necessitated the move to virtual meetings, but including such opportunities in the future is likely to increase participation and allow many more scientists to become involved in IUFRO activities. I participated in the virtual 4.05.00 conference hosted by EURAC and the University of Padova earlier this month (more information below) and it was a great success. You will read more about this in the future, but please share any ideas you have about how we can best achieve this.

The second matter concerns plans for a Division-wide meeting in 2022. One possibility is the Regional IUFRO Conference in Moscow, which has been postponed until September 2022 due to the pandemic. Several divisions have expressed interest in holding their meetings as part of this conference, although plans are tentative at the moment. You will hear more about this next year as we work through alternatives.

The final issue concerns the IUFRO Strategy and Strategic Action Plan for 2020-2024. I'm sharing three PDFs (Strategy, Strategic Action Plan, Action Plan Matrix) that describe the strategy for the next five years and provide a list of actions for Divisions, RGs, and WPs to achieve the goals of Research Excellence, Communication and Diversity, and Impact. I encourage you to review these documents and begin thinking of how we can move forward to meet these goals and objectives. I will convene a meeting of all Division 4 officers in the next few months to discuss the actions we may want to emphasize within Division 4, and as always, I welcome any suggestions or ideas.

Please feel free to email me or your unit officers if you have any questions or suggestions regarding the newsletter, future meetings, or any other topics related to IUFRO or Division 4.

Thank you,
Don Hodges
Meet Your Division 4 Officers
Over the next few newsletters, we will introduce all of the Division 4 officers to you. A full list of your Division 4 officers can be downloaded for your convenience, or view the full list of units for Division 4.
  • paul.hessburg(at)usda.gov, pfhess(at)uw.edu
  • Deputy Coordinator 4.03, Informatics, Modeling, and Statistics
  • Current Position: Research Landscape Ecologist, USDA-FS, PNW Research Station-Wenatchee & University of Washington, College of the Environment-SEFS, Seattle, WA
  • Research Interests: Fire-climate-forest interactions, landscape resilience mechanisms, decision support tools-forest and landscape management
  • Andrew.gray(at)usda.gov
  • Deputy Coordinator, 4.02.03
  • Current Position: Research Ecologist, Forest Inventory and Analysis Program, USDA Forest Service Pacific Northwest Research Station, USA
  • Research Interests: Ecology of forest disturbance, regional monitoring of forest change, drivers of forest carbon flux
  • manuela.hirschmugl(at)joanneum.at
  • Coordinator, 4.02.05
  • Current Position: Assistant Professor in Geospatial Technologies, Institute of Geography and Regional Science, University of Graz, Austria & Senior Scientist at JOANNEUM RESEARCH, Research Institute, Graz, Austria
  • Research interests: Remote sensing applications for tropical forests including carbon assessments, integration of different sensors for forest monitoring (SAR, optical and LiDAR), Alpine forest monitoring in relation to climate change and hazards, time series analysis for change detection
  • christian.hoffmann(at)eurac.edu
  • Deputy Coordinator, 4.05.04
  • Current Position: Research group leader for Rural Economy at the Institute for Regional Development, at the European Academy of Bolzano, Eurac Research
  • Research interests: Agriculture and forest economics, rural value-added chains, rural-urban relationships
  • temesgen.hailemariam(at)oregonstate.edu
  • Deputy Coordinator, 4.00.00
  • Current Position: Professor, Department of Forest Engineering, Resources, and Management, Oregon State University, USA
  • Research Interests: Forest biometrics and geomatics, forest measurements and assessments using LIDAR, sustainable forest management 
  • holusova.katerina(at)seznam.cz
  • Deputy Coordinator, 4.05.01 – Managerial, social and environmental accounting
  • Current position: Assistant Professor, Department of Forest and Wood Products Economics and Policy, Faculty of Forestry and Wood Technology, Mendel University in Brno, Czech Republic 
  • Research interests: Forest economics and policy, forest management planning, nature conservation
  • krishna.poudel(at)msstate.edu 
  • Deputy Coordinator, 4.01.05
  • Current Position: Assistant Professor, Department of Forestry, Mississippi State University, USA
  • Research interests: Forest sampling, measurement, and modeling; forest biomass and carbon estimation; applied statistics
Upcoming Division 4 Meetings
Scholarship & Job Opportunities
Erasmus Mundus Joint Master Degree
There is a call for applications to the Erasmus Mundus Joint Master Degree MEDfOR: Mediterranean Forestry and Natural Resources Management. The call is open from October 1st to December 15th, 2020.

The MEDfOR Programme provides multiple/joint master degrees from universities in Portugal, Spain, Italy and Turkey. The program is open to candidates from all over the world who have a bachelors degree in biological sciences, environmental and earth sciences, mathematics, economics, engineering, chemistry, biochemistry or similar areas. 

Erasmus Mundus scholarships will be available for the highest ranked candidates. More information can be found at www.medfor.eu.
PhD Studentship in Forest Economics
We are searching for a doctoral student to join the Department of Forest Economics at the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences (SLU) in Umeå. The student will engage in the study of sustainable management of forest resources applying economic principles and econometric models. In this context, forest resource management can range from forest owner harvesting decisions, to industry-level behaviors responding to public policies, to the monetarization of forest ecosystem services. The final focus of the PhD program will be determined by the candidate’s and mentor’s common interests. Candidates are encouraged to review research conducted by Dr. Francisco X. Aguilar, Professor, Department of Forest Economics, available here and on Google Scholar. Applications accepted through December 11, 2020.

Location: Umeå, Sweden
Call for Papers
Abstracts for IUFRO Conference

The IUFRO Conference hosted by EURAC and the University of Padova (sponsored by 4.05.00 and 3.08.00) was recently held in Bolzano/Bozen, and a call for papers was announced for those who wish to present at the next conference. 

IUFRO scientists are invited to have the opportunity to publish papers in a special issue of the Austrian Journal of Forest Science (open access). 

Full papers are accepted through 27-11-2020 at the IUFRO Conference Web-Page of Bolzano. Get more information and submit your paper here.
Forests 2021 Special Issue: Spatial Decision Support for Forest Management and Policy Formulation

A call has been announced for proposed manuscripts to be included in the special issue. View the timeline, submission information and details.
Sustainable Forest Management Scheduling, on Wildfire Management and Decision Support

This Research Topic aims to bring together multidisciplinary expertise on wildfire management and forest ecosystem management to report state-of-the-art research that may help address this challenge. In this context, the Research Topic will focus on decision methods and tools that may support a) the characterization of wildfire regimes, b) the understanding of extreme wildfire events, c) the assessment of impacts of wildfire risk on the provision of ecosystem services, d) the enhancement of wildfire prevention, wildfire suppression, and post-fire restoration processes and e) the effectiveness of wildfire risk management strategies.

IUFRO Working Party 4.04.00 has sponsored this research topic. Get more information at the Frontiers Research website.

Deadlines for submission:
  • Abstracts: 29 January 2021
  • Manuscripts: 31 May 2021
Decision Support to Address Multiple Ecosystem Services in Forest Management

The aim of this Special Issue is to bring a better insight into methodological approaches, scientific-based case studies focused on decision support systems facilitating various ecosystem service implementation, trade-offs among them, and their combination within forest management planning applying different silvicultural systems with a special attention to close to nature forestry in the context of sustainable forest management. Get more information here.
Recent Work
Submitted by Manuela Hirschmugl 
Submitted by Simo Sarkki
Submitted by José Borges
Submitted by Vitor Hoeflich
Submitted by Arne Pommerening
Coming soon: Staying on Top in Academia – A primer for (self-)mentoring young researchers in natural and life sciences

The pace of change in academia is ever-increasing, making it difficult for anyone to stay up to date with the right long-term strategy or the next step to take in obtaining a PhD. Academic mentoring has proved helpful to many young researchers, and mentoring programmes have been launched at many universities.

This book is written in a highly accessible style while restricting each chapter to the most essential information so that reading can be accommodated by a busy schedule. It is not limited to any particular university or geographic region, since the author has worked in a number of different countries and encountered many different academic cultures.

The first chapter of the book offers an introduction to academic mentoring and provides an overview of what academic mentoring entails. In the following chapters, important topics are discussed that may come up in mentoring conversations. These include scientific thinking, doctoral studies, behaviour and disappointments, scientific storytelling, teaching, scientific presentations, early career years, research cooperation, job applications and basic data management. The discussions in each of these chapters were designed with a view to provide food for thought and to invite self-reflection as well as continued discussions with peers and mentors. 
Other Forestry News
Introducing the MEDLENTISK Project 
This project is a Mediterranean partnership to improve and exchange scientific and practical knowledge on lentisk tree oil. Read the full project description.
Pete Bettinger recently won a national award from the Society of American Foresters (SAF). SAF noted, "Congrats to Pete Bettinger, SAF’s 2020 Carl Alwin Schenck Award winner for excellence in forestry education! As a professor at the University of Georgia Warnell School of Forestry and Natural Resources, he inspires students with an approachable, creative teaching style."
New Project Financed by Swedish National Space Agency
WP 4.02.06 officeholder Dr. Indu Indirabai has started a new project at the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences: “Sensor Fusion to Map Forest Biomass Change over Space and Time.”
URBforDAN Project Continues in Seven Danube Cities
The Management and Utilization of Urban Forests as Natural Heritage in Danube Cities (URBforDAN) Project is in its third year and continues to work toward improving urban forest management and utilization.

Division 4 colleague Stjepan Posavec is working with the integrated management plan of urban forests in Zagreb. Read more about the URBforDAN Project.
Webinar Series: A decision support platform for spatial optimisation planning of forest ecosystem restoration
WP4.02.01: Resource Data in the Tropics
WP4.02.01 has a new coordination team since January 2020 (Coordinator: Sheila Ward, Deputy Coordinator: Hans Juergen Boehner, Wan Rasidah Kadir, and Jenny Wong). We are reorienting this working party for the purposes of discovery, curation, and use of legacy tropical forest datasets. We are focusing on hardcopy datasets and older digital formats that are in danger of being lost.

These legacy datasets are invaluable for understanding how tropical forests change through time, including the cumulative impacts of land use and climate, and changes in patterns of biodiversity. The first step was to review datasets referred to in older meta databases (ATROFI-UK and TROPIS) to determine if they are still available and if they are in need of updated electronic curation. We have also reached out via electronic media and networks to find additional legacy tropical datasets. The next steps will be to develop an updated metadatabase regarding these datasets, develop policy on ownership and appropriate use with stakeholders, seek funding, and electronically curate such datasets.

We now have an e-list with IUFRO to discuss issues related to legacy tropic forest datasets. For more information, please contact Sheila Ward at [email protected].
IUFRO Conference: THE SOCIAL AND ECOLOGICAL VALUE ADDED OF SMALL-SCALE FORESTRY TO THE BIO-ECONOMY 
The IUFRO Conference was held virtually in early October. Videos of the keynote speeches are accessible at the conference webpage.

You can also access the conference report here. Thanks to Christian Hoffmann, Davide Pettenella, and Lidija Zadnik for compiling the report.
IUFRO Conference: 9TH INTERNATIONAL SYMPOSIUM FOREST AND SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT 
This conference was also held online and had about 125 participants from 26 countries!

Get more information at the conference webpage. You can also access the conference report here. Thanks to Bogdan Strimbu for compiling the report.
Do you have news for us? Hit reply and let us know! We'd love to hear from you.