Experimenting for greater resilience
Making our forests more resilient, particularly in the face of climate change, is a major challenge for the future. The "Innovative regeneration itineraries" project aims to describe and justify a network of plots of innovative renewal itineraries in private forests. The project is part of Wallonia's "Resilient Forest" call for projects.
Wallonia's forests are facing an unprecedented health and climate crisis, and forest owners are being urged to change their practices. It is recommended that they act differently to regenerate their plots in order to obtain more resilient forests, particularly in the face of climate change. In practical terms, this means moving away from the relatively simple current management of monospecific even-aged stands and diversifying regeneration in various ways: diversifying species, making stands more irregular, making greater use of natural regeneration, enriching stands by planting in cells1 or changing site preparation methods. These new itineraries are rarely implemented by landowners because of a lack of knowledge about the ins and outs of these new practices, and a lack of validated technical references. This situation leads to a low level of confidence in these new regeneration techniques.
The "innovative regeneration itineraries" project aims to support forest owners in changing their practices through various exemplary field experiments.
The aim is to evaluate these itineraries in terms of silviculture, economics, resilience and biodiversity, and to use the network as a teaching tool to disseminate the best practices identified among private forest owners and managers. These best practices concern intelligent species diversification, the integration of natural regeneration, changes to site preparation methods and soil protection.
Since the start of the project, no fewer than 78 plots implementing interesting itineraries have been visited, enabling the project database to be expanded. This information has also been used to draw up technical sheets, published in articles in Silva Belgica.
High-strength support points and natural regeneration
Wide-spaced planting and natural regeneration after clear-cutting
These initiatives will continue in 2024, and we are always on the lookout for interesting plots to add to our panel. Please do not hesitate to contact us.