This online event which was livestreamed on 26th Oct 2023 is hosted by Bill Mason of CCFG and features Professor Arne Pommerening who delivers a 40 minute presentation on this topic. This is followed by a question and answer session for participants.
00:00 Introduction - Bill Mason
01:52 Presentation - Arne Pommerening
41:18 Question and answer session
Continuous Cover Forestry (CCF), i.e. forest management based on ecological principles, has been introduced to Ireland and the UK more than twenty years ago. Whilst in the early days identifying simple and robust methods of transforming plantations to woodlands with more complex structures were the primary concern, ongoing climate change and the recent energy crisis have added new challenges of managing for CCF. Many policymakers including the authors of the recent EU forest strategy and of associated recommendations proposed by the European Forest Institute see CCF as a major instrument for mitigating adverse effects of climate change. In this context, carbon forestry has become a major buzzword and a research field in its own right, however, it is still largely unknown how exactly existing woodlands should be managed for optimising carbon sequestration. Questions like “Is carbon forestry part of or a concept separate from CCF?” or “Can carbon forestry be carried out along with other management objectives or is a special focus required?” are hotly debated. Ongoing climate change and all its localised realisations such as spontaneous gales, droughts, floods and insect calamities can always bring the sudden end to any CCF woodland that we have transformed for many years with great effort. In that situation we may be left with little more than bare ground and methods are needed to establish new CCF woodlands from scratch. CCF from scratch may also include the use of coppice systems, particularly the use of coppice with standards and coppice selection systems. Such system can contribute to satisfying the current demand for sustainable energy whilst creating diverse habitats and providing high-quality timber at the same time.
Arne Pommerening is a professor at the Department of Forest Ecology and Management of the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences (SLU) at Umeå in Northern Sweden. For more than 20 years he has taught CCF to university classes in the UK, Switzerland and Sweden. Whilst working at Bangor University in Wales between 2000 and 2011, he contributed to the introduction of CCF in the UK and offered seminars in Ireland. Arne has recently published a textbook entitled “Continuous Cover Forestry - Theories, Concepts and Implementation” and he is currently involved in the introduction of CCF to Sweden.
For more information about Arne's work, including his recently published text book on CCF, please visit www.pommerening.org