RESONATE: Resilient forest value chains – enhancing resilience through natural and socio-economic responses, a four year Horizon2020 project (https://resonateforest.org/), was recently completed with two synthesis reports and three policy briefs.

Forest ecosystems and social-ecological forest systems are facing many short and long-term risks. The RESONATE project focussed on four resilience challenges: biodiversity decline, changes in societal demand, increased risks of forest disturbances and changing tree species suitability. The project aimed to generate the required knowledge and practices for making European forests, the services they provide and the related economic activities more resilient to future climate change and disturbances.

RESONATE adopted complementary research approaches, and scientific findings of four years of research were synthesised in Deliverable D5.5. The synthesis report i) introduces the resilience assessment methodology developed in RESONATE, ii) summarises the analysis of forest disturbance hotspots and how they are projected to change in the future, iii) explores the potential of resilience enhancing measures in forest management and forest value chains, iv) analyses regional differences in the effectiveness of resilience management based on forest modelling case studies, v) investigates how stakeholders perceive the importance of resilience challenges and measures across three case study countries and how to manage potential trade-offs, and vi) compares findings across different research streams.

Another report, Deliverable D5.6 summarised and discussed RESONATE recommendations for policy makers, practitioners and research. It builds on three complementary policy briefs: i) Managing Forest Disturbances in a Changing Climate; ii) The Role of Biodiversity in Making Forests Resilient; iii) Enhancing climate resilience of forest value chains. A policy workshop in Brussels (10th February 2025) discussed the policy brief recommendations with stakeholders, who ranked the importance of the RESONATE recommendations, suggested some additional recommendations, discussed potential trade-offs and identified further research needs. The deliverable D5.6 report places the stakeholder feedback received in the wider context of managing trade-offs and synergies on enhancing resilience in social-ecological forest systems.

Links to the synthesis reports and policy briefs:

For more information, feel free to contact Marcus Lindner (marcus.lindner@efi.int)