PESFOR-W: Improving the design and environmental effectiveness of woodlands for water Payments for Ecosystem Services

ABSTRACT: The EU Water Framework Directive aims to ensure restoration of Europe?s water bodies to ?good ecological status? by 2027. Many Member States will struggle to meet this target, with around half of EU river catchments currently reporting below standard water quality. Diffuse pollution from agriculture represents a major pressure, affecting over 90% of river basins. Accumulating evidence shows that recent improvements to agricultural practices are benefiting water quality but in many cases will be insufficient to achieve WFD objectives. There is growing support for land use change to help bridge the gap, with a particular focus on targeted tree planting to intercept and reduce the delivery of diffuse pollutants to water. This form of integrated catchment management offers multiple benefits to society but a significant cost to landowners and managers. New economic instruments, in combination with spatial targeting, need to be developed to ensure cost effective solutions - including tree planting for water benefits - are realised. Payments for Ecosystem Services (PES) are flexible, incentive-based mechanisms that could play an important role in promoting land use change to deliver water quality targets. The PESFOR-W COST Action will consolidate learning from existing woodlands for water PES schemes in Europe and help standardize approaches to evaluating the environmental effectiveness and cost-effectiveness of woodland measures. It will also create a European network through which PES schemes can be facilitated, extended and improved, for example by incorporating other ecosystem services linking with aims of the wider forestscarbon policy nexus

Methods of oak silviculture in Austria

In Austria oak stands occupy an area covering ≈ 150 000 ha or ≈ 4% of the total forest area. Half of the oak stands are managed as coppice or coppice with standards, and half are managed as high forest. During the last 2 decades there has been a remarkable increase in developing young oak stands. The interest in managing suitable forest areas for oak is apparently growing. Therefore regeneration methods, timely and proper management and thinning regimes will be very important in the near future. As a result of different growth performances it is necessary to determine different production targets and rotation cycles. For this reason treatment programmes have been developed dependent on selected sites considering biological, ecological and technical parameters to achieve high economic yield. Investigations into oak stands of different age classes have already shown the importance of timely cleaning, tending and continuous thinning during the first third of the rotation cycles. Various treatment programmes and practical knowledge relating to regeneration, tending, crop selection and thinning have been discussed.Méthodes de sylviculture du chêne en Autriche. La chênaie occupe en Autriche une superficie d'environ 150 000 ha, soit près de 4% de la surface forestière totale. La moitié des peuplements de chênes est traitée en taillis ou taillis-sous-futaie, l'autre moitié est aménagée en futaie. Au cours des 2 dernières décennies, il y a eu un accroissement remarquable de création de jeunes peuplements de chênes. L'intérêt pour l'aménagement des stations favorables aux chênes est apparemment grandissant. Pour cette raison, les méthodes de régénération, époque, aménagement et régime des éclaircies, seront très importantes dans la prochaine période. En relation avec les différentes performances de croissance, il est nécessaire de définir différents niveaux de productivité et de durée de rotation. C'est pour ces raisons que des programmes d'aménagement ont été développés, en liaison avec les caractéristiques des stations, prenant en compte les paramètres biologiques, écologiques et techniques, cela afin d'aboutir à une production de haute valeur économique. Les recherches menées dans des peuplements de chêne de différentes classes d'âge mettent en évidence l'importance de la période des dégagements et le rôle de la gestion des éclaircies au cours du premier tiers de la rotation. Différents types d'aménagement et les connaissances pratiques concernant la régénération, le régime des éclaircies, la sélection des tiges sont examinés