Starting in September, the INTERREG SK-CZ cross-border project is focused on adapting forests in border areas of the Czech and Slovak Republics to climate change. It aims to bring new strategies to protect these important ecosystems. Forests are key to the local bioeconomy and provide a range of ecosystem services such as water retention, biodiversity protection and carbon storage, but face serious threats due to climate change. The sub-goals of the project are:
- exchange scientific and practical knowledge between partners,
- develop a joint adaptation strategy for forests, including measures in the field of forest management, game management, and water management
- establish four demonstration sites for testing the proposed measures.
The project results will be disseminated through workshops intended for target groups (professional forestry personnel, state administration, nature conservation, local owners, forest manager, representatives of local governments). The general public will learn about the project results via other suitable forms. Long-term experiments on demonstration sites will help evaluate and improve the proposed solutions. This approach has the potential to not only improve the state of forests at the local level, but also to provide valuable information for national forest adaptation strategies to climate change.
The project will last two years. The project coordinator is Forests Slovakia. Other project partners are Forests of the Czech Republic, the National Forestry Centre, and the Czech University of Life Sciences in Prague. The investigator for FLD is prof. Ing. Róbert Marušák, PhD.