Europe’s forests are under increasing pressure from climate change and natural disturbances. At the same time, the Nature Restoration Regulation of the EU Biodiversity Strategy pushes for urgent restoration of forests. This Summer School of the Euroleague for Life Sciences deals with how to approach and adapt to this, and how sudden disturbances can steer restoration activities, at scales from local to Europe wide.
The Summer School will be held at the beautiful Alpine Study Center of Tuscia University in Pieve Tesino, Italy. This venue is perfect for the purpose, as it is surrounded by forests with a range of management practices and in which large-scale multiple disturbances (windstorms and bark beetle outbreaks) were observed since 2018. Participants will be introduced to topics like adaptation to disturbances, conservation, restoration challenges, monitoring and stakeholder issues. They will see up-close how forest management can help disturbed forest stands to recover and increase their resilience. The programme will include hands-on exercises with the EFISCEN-space model, which students will apply to the Southern Alpine region of Italy.
After completing the course, the participants should be able to
Understand and enumerate the scientific and technical challenges consequent to large-scale disturbances for specific case studies:
- The significance of forest disturbance
- The role of management in adaptation
- Balancing Salvage Logging and Conservation
- Local versus large scale impacts
- Detecting Cascading Risks
- Multi-Objective Restoration after disturbance
- Hands on modelling and interpretation, discussing and presenting
- Understanding the role of genetic resources in forest restoration
In terms of skills and competences
- Use remote sensing based tools for detecting hotspots of disturbances
- Understand the role of computer-based decision support system to simulate wind damage risk and the impacts of different silvicultural practices to improve resilience to wind damage
- Model tree species selection for Forest restoration in future climate
- Apply knowledge of forest restoration management methods and strategies to evaluate research results from case studies and the scientific literature on forest restoration
Course set-up
The course is planned to run for 7 days, 10 - 16 May 2026.
It starts on a Sunday afternoon with welcome drinks, followed by introductory poster pitches by the participants, and concluded by an opening lecture about the general theme and aims of the course.
Throughout the course, there will be morning lectures (50 min) by experts from the partner institutes as well as from outside. Lectures will cover interdisciplinary aspects related to forests, forest management, disturbances and long term consequences and biodiversity conservation in Europe. These can relate to ecology, but also to social and sustainability aspects, economics, integrated management and governance.
Every teacher provides one paper beforehand so students can prepare questions and discussion points. Before the week starts, 2 students are assigned to a lecture, in order to prepare and lead the discussion (30-45 min).
In the afternoons, participants will work in small teams on a specific group work assignment. This will allow participants to link their theoretical knowledge with real-life challenges, aimed at finding solutions for the issues of our times. They will use EFISCEN-space and its parameterisation for a small region in the Alps. This way, participants will learn to handle and understand the model and then apply to different questions.
The experts will be present for 2-3 days to interact with the participants, to provide topical masterclasses, and to provide input for the group assignment.
In the evenings, there may be one or two leisure lectures by invited speakers or local stakeholders. On Friday afternoon, there is time reserved to explore the region a bit more. On Saturday, the group projects are presented and the Summer School will be wrapped-up so all can make their way home in the afternoon.
The Summer School will include (an) excursion(s) and field visit(s) in the local area, to allow for interaction and exchange of ideas with the stakeholders, and to illustrate the challenges on the ground.
| Target Group | The course is aimed at PhD candidates, postdocs, and other academic staff. Selection will be based on a motivation statement. |
| Group Size | Maximum 30 participants |
| Course duration | 6 days, from Sunday afternoon to Saturday afternoon |
| Prior knowledge | No specific prior knowledge required |
| Location | Alpine Studies Center CSALP University of Tuscia |
Course lecturers/organisers
- Anna Barbati, Università degli Studi della Tuscia, Italy
- Gert-Jan Nabuurs, Forest Ecology & Management, Wageningen University & Research, the Netherlands
- Rodolfo Picchio, Università degli Studi della Tuscia, Italy
- Giorgio Alberti, University of Udine, Italy
- Magda Bou Dagher Kharrat, EFIMED Barcelona, Spain
- Debojyoti Chakraborty, Austrian Research Centre for Forests, BFW Vienna, Austria
- Albert Ciceu, Austrian Research Centre for Forests, BFW Vienna, Austria
- Francesco Latterini, Institute of Dendrology, PAS, Poznan, Poland
- Marco Patacca, Wageningen University and Research/School of Life Sciences, Technical University of Munich, Germany
- Alba Viana Soto, School of Life Sciences, Technical University of Munich, Germany
- Claudius van de Vijver and Miriam van Heist, the Graduate School Production Ecology and Resource Conservation (PE&RC), the Netherlands
FEE1 | |
| PhD candidates of PE&RC/WIMEK/EPS/WASS/VLAG/WIAS with approved TSP and WU EngD candidates | € 375,- |
| ELLS members2 | € 750,- |
| All other academic participants | € 830,- |
| All others | € 1100,- |
1 The fee covers a reader and excursions, as well as accommodation and all meals. It does not include travel costs.
2 Find here whether your institute is a member of the ELLS.
PE&RC Cancellation Conditions
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