Mistra Digital Forest at the IUFRO World Congress
Events
In June, Sweden had the honour of hosting IUFRO's prestigious World Forestry Congress. Mistra Digital Forest was involved in several activities at the Stockholm Fair, as well as in a well-attended excursion to the forest where participants were able to experience the ways in which digitalisation contributes to sustainable forestry.
More than 4,000 forest researchers, experts and forest professionals attended the IUFRO World Conference 23-29 June in Stockholm. Mistra Digital Forest was involved in several activities on site at the Stockholm Fair.
– IUFRO provides an opportunity to strengthen the vital collaboration between researchers and forestry stakeholders, both nationally and internationally. Sharing data and building an infrastructure for this accelerates the development of the digital solutions that promote sustainable forestry. Collaboration is also a prerequisite for establishing common methods for measuring various forest values, such as biodiversity. Many people at this conference are calling for precisely that, says Sverker Danielsson, Mistra Digital Forest’s Programme Director
During the world conference, Mistra Digital Forest arranged sessions together with its Nordic sister organisations. These sessions highlighted the major changes and opportunities that AI is contributing to the development of new decision support systems, and to the automation of forestry machinery. The programme also provided concrete examples of how combinations of data and advanced data analysis methods are being used in order to assess biodiversity, clearing needs and machine accessibility, for example.
– The digital developments of recent years represent a paradigm shift. The fact that we now have data and methods for identifying individual trees means that the forest industry can contribute more effectively to the EU's environmental and climate goals, says Stefano Puliti of Mistra Digital Forest's Norwegian sister programme, Smart Forest.
On Wednesday, an excursion was organised together with the Swedish Forest Industries Federation, Sveaskog, the Swedish Forest Agency, Skogforsk, SLU and Umeå University. There was great interest, and four busloads with a total of 200 IUFRO visitors were driven out to the Sörmland Trail. There, the participants were able to walk between different stations, each of which demonstrated examples of Sweden's contribution to digitalised sustainable forestry.
– IUFRO provides an opportunity to see what's happening in forest research, and to take this further in my own work as a researcher. I'm particularly interested in digitalisation and how we can combine different data to gain more knowledge about the forests, and the Nordic countries are at the forefront of this. As a researcher with ties to both Indonesia and Germany, it is exciting to discuss how different conditions in these countries affect the data and analysis methods that can be used, says IUFRO participant Deha Agus Umarhadi, from Gadjah Mada University, Indonesia.
Several conference participants with expertise in digitalised forestry could be found at the Swedish Forest Industries Federation stand, among them Antti Kaartinen, Head of Precision Forestry at Stora Enso Finland, who is also involved in Mistra Digital Forest's Finnish sister programme Unite:
– Currently there is a lot of focus on exploring the possibilities of different kinds of data. We collect and process data from a variety of data sources throughout the forest, for different purposes such as climate, environment, forest owner preferences and cost-effectiveness. These are all important perspectives.