MOTIVE

The project focuses on a wide range of European forest types under different intensities of forest management. In particular, MOTIVE examines impacts with respect to the disturbance regimes determining forest dynamics.

MOTIVE seeks to develop and evaluate strategies that can adapt forest management practices to balance multiple objectives under changing environmental conditions. The evaluation of different adaptive management systems will take place within a scenario analysis and a regional landscape framework. A wide range of possible scenarios will be taken into account from optimistic predictions (“no major change for forest ecosystems”) including possible opportunities offered by climate change (e.g. increased tree growth in northern areas) to worst case scenarios (“extreme deterioration of the growth conditions for trees”) on different time scales (short-, mid-, long term). The main forest types in Europe for the most important bioclimatic regions will be covered.

MOTIVE is a project that encompasses 20 partners from 14 European countries. It has an overall budget of almost 9 million euros, from which 7 million will be paid as EU contribution. The project is coordinated by the Forest Research Institute of Baden-Württemberg with duration of 4 years. It will be ongoing until May 2013.