Systemic solutions for upscaling of urgent ecosystem restoration for forest-related biodiversity and ecosystem services (SUPERB)

The main purpose of the SUPERB project is to create an enabling environment for transformative change towards large-scale forest restoration, which empowers decision makers to take just and informed decisions for restoration of biodiversity, ecosystem services and carbon sequestration. This should be possible in a manner that minimizes region specific trade-offs and maximizes synergies between ecosystem services. With this aim, SUPERB is expected to provide a multidisciplinary, practical, and scientific restoration knowledge basis. In 12 large-scale demonstrators across Europe, best practices responding to key forest restoration and adaptation challenges will be monitored and evaluated. On this basis, tools will be provided for up-scalping of effective interventions up to over one million hectares in 10-15 years, involving the collaboration and integration of actors from different sectors and disciplines to speed up transformative change. Among the means to achieve this, a comprehensive multi-language online gateway for forest restoration will be developed for guiding practitioners and restoration stakeholders across Europe. It will advise them on how to deal with restoration barriers, and facilitate access to easily applicable and comprehensible tools for restoration, such as databases for best practices, tools for tree species selection, and spatially explicit projections of restoration benefits. The Gateway will also host a restoration marketplace, where market agents, such as potential funders and landowners, can interact to develop and carry out restoration projects. The SUPERB project will measure its impact through an extensive network of stakeholders, in order to ensure the relevance of its outcomes. The Silviculture group at Freiburg (Jürgen Bauhus, Klaus Kremer) leads Workpackage 6 on “Biodiversity and Ecosystem Management”. Within this workpackage, the specific tasks of Freiburg University will be to develop an evidence base and best practice guidelines for effective and successful implementation and monitoring of forest ecosystem restoration. Particular foci will be placed on systematic reviews to provide a robust knowledge base for different restoration approaches to achieve certain restoration goals. In addition, we will contribute to inventories of forest structure and biodiversity in different restoration demonstration areas in Europe and the analyses of relationships between ecosystem structure, composition, functions and biodiversity.