Since 2017 there has been a rapid rise in global efforts to plant billions of trees at scale to mitigate climate change, address environmental degradation, reforest large areas devastated by natural disturbances (e.g. wildfires), and to accelerate development of the bioeconomy. In parallel, emerging technologies offer new opportunities to increase productivity, overcome labour constraints and to minimise environmental impacts of tree planting operations. The application of Indigenous Knowledge in forest establishment practices has also been gaining importance globally.
As a result of all these factors, planted forest establishment is again a highly topical area of forest science and it is vital that forest regeneration and afforestation efforts are accelerated by adopting the latest advances in forest science and technology. The goal of this next conference in New Zealand is to bring together forest leaders, researchers, practitioners, and technologists to present the state-of-the-art science and technology being developed and implemented to address the opportunities and challenges associated with actively establishing and regenerating forest ecosystems in an increasingly complex, extreme, and rapidly changing environment.
