Press Release, 26. June 2025

Forest research treads new paths

The UFZ and Thünen Institute combine expertise from research and practice

New forest living labs in the Harz Mountains and Lower Bavaria: German forest and wood research is being realigned to address the challenges of the forests of the future. The SURVEY joint project, coordinated by the Helmholtz Centre for Environmental Research (UFZ) and the Thünen Institute of Forest Ecosystems, combines expertise from research and practice.

The forest management of the future is being developed in the Harz Mountains and in Lower Bavaria. Three forest living labs are being established there to collect data and insights under real-world conditions. The aim is to develop new approaches for managing severely damaged and vulnerable spruce stands in the German low mountain ranges and to enhance natural climate protection in these forest ecosystems. The data collected in the living labs will be synthesised, regionalised, and projected using remote sensing and modelling. A long-term, nationwide implementation of the approach will also be tested.

The forest living labs form the core of the new SURVEY research-practice network, which is coordinated by the UFZ and the Thünen Institute of Forest Ecosystems. Project partners include the Julius Kühn Institute (JKI), the Northwest German Forest Research Institute, the Forest Research and Competence Centre Gotha/Thuringia Forestry, Ludwig Maximilian University, the Technical University of Munich, and the Technical University of Dresden. For the first time, three sites are being studied using a standardised approach with involvement from all relevant forest-related groups. One of the nearly bare forest areas will be left to regenerate naturally, another will be reforested using conventional methods, and a third will be planted with tree species currently considered especially resilient to changing climatic conditions. Digital twins of the areas are being created so that the results can be directly verified. The results obtained locally are transferred to larger forest areas with the help of forest modelling, remote sensing, artificial intelligence methods, and other geodata. This allows the measurements to be scaled up to a regional high resolution forest model, which can be used to analyse forest growth and productivity of large areas.

For project manager Andreas Bolte of the Thünen Institute of Forest Ecosystems, a key feature of the new forest living labs is the inclusion of all major forest-related groups at every stage of the process. As in the REGULUS research programme, which brings together forestry and wood research across Germany, science and applied practice will also closely collaborate in the SURVEY project. “Forests are part of society. Foresters, conservationists, and other professionals cannot save the forests alone. Only society as a whole can do that”, says Bolte.

“For the first time, we are combining traditional forestry observations with remote sensing monitoring, AI methods, and model-based simulations. This enables us to more rapidly detect novel dynamic changes in the forest ecosystem and to project its future state”, says UFZ remote sensing expert Daniel Doktor from the project team, emphasising the interdisciplinary approach of the project. Governance research is also part of the project. The researchers aim to strengthen long-term collaboration in forest and wood research and explore possible legal frameworks for sustainable forest management.

The project, which is funded by the Federal Ministry of Research, Technology and Space (BMFTR) via the project management agency PTJ, was launched on 1 June 2025 and will run for three years. There are plans to continue the established forest living labs beyond the initial term of the project.

Further information:

https://regulus-waldholz.de/waldreallabornet/

Further information

Dr. Daniel Doktor
UFZ Department Remote Sensing
daniel.doktor@ufz.de

Prof. Dr. Andreas Bolte
Thünen-Institut für Waldökosysteme, Eberswalde
andreas.bolte@thuenen.de

UFZ press office

Susanne Hufe
Phone: +49 341 6025-1630
presse@ufz.de