Adapting forests to change: the IN-SYLVA Europe project wins a place on the ESFRI 2026 Roadmap

No forest adaptation without biodiversity, no biodiversity without forest adaptation.

The design of IN-SYLVA Europe is based on an established French model, IN-SYLVA France, which was set up in 2017 and has featured on the French national research infrastructure roadmap since 2018. The concept of forest management infrastructure put into practice by IN-SYLVA France will now be widely transferred to international scale through IN-SYLVA Europe, under the guidance of an international coordination team (currently five organisations from three countries), coordinated by INRAE with the assistance of the CIRAD (the French agricultural research centre for international development), the Universities of Rouen Normandy (France) and Copenhagen (Denmark), and Finland’s natural resources institute (LUKE).  Its originality lies in the integrated vision it has developed of adaptive forest management, covering a broad range of forest situations, from the temperate stands of mainland France (17 million hectares, representing 31% of the country’s land area) to overseas tropical stands (including 8 million hectares of forest in Guiana). Its aim is to support forest socio-ecosystem adaptation in order to safeguard the long-term future of a multiplicity of ecosystem services, including the sustainable production of timber and biomass for various purposes, the storage of carbon (in both trees and soils), and the maintenance of biodiversity, a key driver for forest productivity.

Information spanning over three decades from 200 000 experimental sites in 32 countries

‘IN-SYLVA Europe will now build a network of experimental sites and their associated resources that reaches across many countries, providing coverage of large-scale European ecological gradients, and ensuring interoperability’, Jean-François Trontin, the project manager for the development of the infrastructure, explains. ‘European forests face mammoth challenges’. They must adapt to the impacts of climate change and the compound effects of the many resultant environmental hazards (droughts, wildfires, storms or disease and pests), while continuing to store carbon, conserve biodiversity and supply timber. A Mediterranean forest, a mountain forest or a Nordic forest will each respond differently to these pressures, and the responses will vary according to local circumstances (biology, environment and management, organisation of local industry, and land governance). To understand the problems and find solutions, we must be able to experiment (by actively intervening in ecosystems), not just observe what happens, and, above all, these experiments must be conducted in contrasting contexts. This is one of the major advantages of IN-SYLVA Europe, with the potential for 200,000 experimental sites to be monitored over the long term (>30 years) in 32 countries, of which 12 are non-European.

A service provided to all who work towards sustainability in forest management

The European infrastructure must make it possible to test the effects of different levers for forest management (diversification of species and varieties, sylvicultural itineraries, management of the forest–wildlife balance, soil management, wildfire risk management), to produce data using shared protocols (international standards), and to make these available to a wide range of communities working in the forest-timber-production sector. IN-SYLVA Europe’s services have accordingly been devised for use by scientists, but also by forest managers, businesses, public authorities, groups and associations and, more widely, by all members of society (including individuals) interested in the sustainable management of forests. 

The infrastructure also addresses a limitation that is particularly problematic for long-term ecosystems such as forests: ‘We are seeking to set up long-term experiments. A forest doesn’t spring up in a year, like a wheat crop’, Jean-François Trontin stresses. For species whose life cycles often last for 80 to 100 years, and far longer in the case of oaks, the need for this continuity in monitoring is a defining factor. Yet research projects are not always designed to support this sort of long-term data collection. ‘Since the 2000s, we have identified more than a hundred collaborative European projects on forest adaptation to climate change and other global changes’, explains Jean-François Trontin. ‘With funding for three or four years, once they come to an end, their results are dispersed, for lack of a common space where they can be shared and re-used’. This lack of a permanent structure was the starting point for IN-SYLVA France, and now for IN-SYLVA Europe. The ESFRI’s last strategic report (2021) and landscape analysis (2024) highlighted this need for a forest research infrastructure. 

The single portal provided by IN-SYLVA Europe will give users access to experimental sites, samples, data and digital tools for data collection, analysis and infrastructure modelling. By using situation gradients at European scale (rather than a collection of individual sites) from the outset to tackle their research questions, researchers will be able to compare the responses of different types of forest ecosystem, to identify generic features and to identify elements that are specific to their own topic of investigation. This will enable them to fine-tune solutions tailored to local circumstances, exploring, for example, the evolution of particular management practices or the identification of species and varieties that are more resistant to disruption’, he continues. 

From the forest floor and the lab to modelling … and beyond, to training and knowledge transfer

The IN-SYLVA Europe infrastructure has been in preparation since 2023 and will become fully operational in 2034, but it can already offer access to over 200 services provided by some fifty organisations (including 45 research bodies) from 22 countries. The French ‘node’ (IN-SYLVA France) alone provides 52 of these services, which have already been used in numerous France 2030 programmes, in particular by the FairCarboN and ForesTT PEPRs (priority equipment and research programmes). The services are based on three major interlinked spheres of activity: 

• in-field experimentation (in situ),
• rapid throughput laboratory analysis (in lab), 
• systems for data provision and analysis, including valorisation through modelling and development of simulation tools for decision-makers (in silico).

These services produce a fourth pillar involving training and scientific knowledge transfer for those working in the forestry and timber industry and wider society (in edu).

The consortium, which already includes 21 European countries along with New Zealand, is in a strong position at this stage of its development, having obtained considerable political support (from the governments of thirteen countries) and funding commitments (from 27 institutions and the Ministers responsible for infrastructure in France, New Zealand, and the Castille-et-León region of Spain). This has allowed it to meet the ESFRI’s threshold for project submission with ample room to spare. More than 90 European organisations have also already expressed their interest in this type of forest-focused initiative.

International reach

‘A further strength of IN-SYLVA Europe is that we managed to persuade the IUFRO (International Union of Forest Research Organizations) to join the consortium of 37 signatories to our Memorandum of Understanding (MoU)’, Jean-François Trontin remarks. ‘This means that we are going to be working together on matters with global reach’, since the IUFRO is the chief world organisation for international scientific cooperation on forests (with more than 630 members in 115 countries). As an example, the partnership will allow various IUFRO ‘Task Forces’, set up to encourage interdisciplinary cooperation, to be mobilised – for instance the task force on the development of AI in forest management (TF54), to which members of IN-SYLVA Europe are already contributors.

‘We are very proud to be leading this vision for forest research at European and international scale’, comments Sébastien Duplessis, head of INRAE’s EcoDIV Division. ‘We are truly convinced that IN-SYLVA Europe will provide the scientific community with the equipment, competences and skills it needs to produce new knowledge’. 

Improved emergency response 

The integration of the knowledge and skills available within the European infrastructure will enable researchers to respond better to emergency situations where their help is requested by public authorities or socio-economic actors. ‘Indeed, we regularly see requests to researchers that are frequently born out of crisis situations and require immediate responses. We are asked, “The forest is dying, what do you suggest?”’, Jean-François Trontin reports. ‘It is almost devastating to have to answer that, if we begin trials now, we will have an answer in 5 10, 15 or 20 years’ time’. Researchers are aware of the urgency, and for this reason they have long warned of the necessity of preserving and updating a scientific historical evidence base built by earlier generations. ‘Our predecessors have been planting different varieties using different sylvicultural methods under different ecological circumstances for over a century now’, he reminds us. Those historical trials have fed into current research. By making such findings visible, accessible and useable, we are also effectively creating the basis for the work of future generations who will draw on the experiments that are now being set up. ‘A research infrastructure is also a collective memory bank’, he concludes. 

IN-SYLVA France, the model adopted for Europe 

‘IN-SYLVA France has, for nearly a decade (since 2017), been a key piece in the strategy developed by INRAE and EcoDIV to support researchers working on the functioning of managed forest socio-ecosystems’, stresses Sébastien Duplessis. Under the leadership of Laurent Saint-André (INRAE), who is also the coordinator of IN-SYLVA Europe, the French infrastructure brings together INRAE and six partners: the CIRAD (French Agricultural Research Centre for International Development), the CNPF (national centre for private forest ownership), the FCBA (industry technical institute for wood products), the OFB (French Office for Biodiversity), the ONF (French National Forest Office) and the University of Rouen Normandy. Part of France’s national infrastructure roadmap since 2018, it leverages three areas of forest management – genetic resources, sylvicultural itineraries, and biogeochemical cycles, a service profile that IN-SYLVA Europe will now be able to support at European and international levels (South America, Asia and Africa). 

IN-SYLVA Europe’s international coordination team 

A 16-strong team from five research bodies in three countries has been tasked with coordinating the preparatory phase for the infrastructure which will now begin (2027 – 2030). Their expertise extends across many scientific areas of research, data and forest planning, and questions of regulation, governance, law and finance.

Coordinator 

Laurent Saint-André, INRAE (National Infrastructure Coordinator, IN-SYLVA France, Speaker at the ESFRI hearing)

Project manager   

Jean-François Trontin, INRAE (Technical and Administrative Officer, IN-SYLVA France)

Coordination team members 
INRAE: Céline Meredieu and Christian Pichot (deputy manager, data manager, IN-SYLVA France), Luc Pâques, Hervé Jactel, Zhun Mao, and Cécile Robin
CIRAD: Loïc Brancheriau (deputy manager, IN-SYLVA France)
University of Rouen Normandy: Lucie Vincenot
University of Copenhagen (Denmark): Annemarie Bastrup-Birk (Speaker at the ESFRI hearing), Thomas Nord-Larsen
LUKE (Finland): Mikko Kurttila (Speaker at the ESFRI hearing), Tuija Aronen, Virpi Alenius, Sanna Sorvari-Sundet