Decision making in forestry: an ethnographic analysis for the development of digital solutions to support the adaption of forests to a changing climate.
A research project by the University of Siegen
Current Challenges
Climate change requires a profound transformation of forest and woodland areas, at a previous unknown scale: The choice of tree species must be adapted holistically, so that forest management and protection can be rethought, timber harvesting and logistics chains adapted, and processing operations (e.g. cutting technologies, sorting, gluing, etc.) technically converted. This will result in significant changes in the global timber market, as well as to the forestry sector as a whole. New approaches are needed for the wood-based bioeconomy, e.g. in timber construction, wood-based materials and wood pulping.
At the same time, a "forest dieback 2.0" is occurring in Germany, especially of spruce forests, but increasingly also of other forest species. This is both a serious challenge for ecological protection and the fight against climate change, where forests play a crucial role, as well as the timber industry, which is facing severe losses. The federal and state governments have already developed various strategies and guidelines to mitigate this problem and adapt silviculture to climate change, which are being communicated to foresters and forest owners through various channels. Ultimately, however, there is a difference between these guidelines or strategies and their implementation in forestry practice.
The latter is complex and determined by different actors whose actions are in turn influenced by different sources of information and motivations: For example, there are different economic goals, ownership structures or relationships, as well as interests of the private forest owners (which mainly but not exclusively serves the economic extraction of timber, i.e. a monetary primary interest), the publicly owned forest (which also focuses on goals such as nature conservation and tourism), as well as different forest protection regulations (e.g. Natura2000 and FFH areas). In addition, further incentives for specific implementation measures are developed, such as contract nature conservation, promotion for sustainable forest management or monetization of forest ecosystem services. In addition, there are specific local regulations and circumstances, such as local policy requirements (e.g., the importance of a forest area for tourism, certain ownership patterns, etc.), specific natural conditions, or even inclinations and environmental beliefs of the owners and responsible foresters. Based on the multitude of existing concepts, local conditions and the inherent planning uncertainty due to climate change, we would like to explore how exactly forests are adapted to climate change in practice.
Goals of the project
These complex processes and the question of how exactly concepts for forest adaptation to climate change are implemented in specific settings are still largely unexplored from a scientific perspective. Based on the problem described above, we would like to investigate the concrete, situated implementation of adaptation measures in different forest settings in several ethnographic studies. This consideration has two consecutive goals:
1) to gain a deeper understanding of the implementation of climate-adapted silvicultural concepts in practice and to identify, for example, hurdles in the implementation of climate adaptation strategies.
2) Based on this, opportunities for socio-technical intervention will be identified to improve actual forest practice with respect to climate adaptation goals. Such interventions aim to support e.g. education and knowledge, planning and implementation, policy or financial instruments.
The research group
The project is being caried out by Felix Carros and Max Krüger. Both are members of the research group at the chair for Information Systems and New Media (WiNeMe), run by Prof. Dr. Volker Wulf at the University of Siegen. The group researches innovative ICT applications, particularly in the fields of cooperative work, community support, aging society and sustainability. Technological innovations are developed in the research fields of human-computer interaction, computer-supported group work (CSCW) as well as ubiquitous computing and software. The various research activities are related to each other through cross-cutting questions of design methodologies. These concern software engineering fundamentals, participatory design, end user development, methods of integrated organizational and technical development, and fundamentals of design science.
Contact
We are constantly looking for partners from forestry and forest conservation, that want to participate in our research activities. If you are interested in the project and willing to share your expertise and experiences in conversations and workshops with us, please do not hesitate to reach out.
The project “Entscheidungswege und Entscheidungsfindung in der Forstwirtschaft: Eine ethnographische Analyse zur Entwicklung von digitalen Lösungswegen (FOREA)” is funded by the Federal Ministry of Food and Agriculture under the funding indicator number 2221NR067X for a period of 30 months from October 1st, 2022 to March 31, 2025. The responsible project agency is the Fachagentur für Nachwachsende Rohstoffe e.V. (FNR).
