Göttingen Symposium
"Forests in the Anthropocene"

Our main aim of the symposium was to revitalize academic life and scientific exchange after more than two years without face-to-face colloquia and seminar series. As we all know, forests in Europe and worldwide are under enormous stress by a multitude of different drivers ranging from the effects of major droughts, storms, and insect outbreaks to novel tree diseases and land-use change with enormous repercussions on ecological and social functions. Understanding and addressing these interacting processes is a great challenge, and an interdisciplinary approach is needed more than ever.
Under the topic “Forests in the Anthropocene”, we thus aim at scanning the horizon of different approaches ranging from the molecular level, genomics, ecophysiology to the hydrology of landscapes, remote sensing and broad-scale modeling.

Time and venue: The symposium took place on Thursday, 30th of June 2022, 1 to 7.30 pm, at the Faculty of Forest Sciences and Forest Ecology, University of Göttingen, building Büsgenweg 2, lecture hall F02.

Target audience are faculty members, researchers, and students of our faculty and related ones (biology, agriculture).

Program: Thursday, June 30th, 2022

13:00 Welcome Notes and Introduction
13:30 Dr. Ana Bastos (MPI-BGC Jena): Forest vulnerability to compound extremes and disturbances in a changing climate
14:00 Dr. Cornelius Senf (TU Munich): 35 years of forest disturbance dynamics in Europe: patterns, trends and impacts
14:30 PD Dr. Sigrid Netherer (Boku Vienna): Norway spruce and Ips typographus - insights into an important host tree - bark beetle system
15:00 Dr. Björn Hoppe (Julius Kühn-Institute): From deadwood to healthy plants - Insights into activities of wood-inhabiting organisms
15:30 Coffee Break
16:00 Dr. Annegret Kohler (INRAE Université de Lorraine): Unearthing the roots of ectomycorrhizal symbioses
16:30 Dr. Sybille Unsicker (MPI Chemical Ecology, Jena): Poplar-environment interactions: from molecules to the ecosystem
17:00 Prof. Dr. Bernhard Schuldt (University of Würzburg): The heat is on – evaluating silvicultural options from a tree physiological perspective
17:30 Dr. Ilja van Meerfeld (University of Zurich): Effects of reforestation on hydrological processes and streamflow responses
18:00 Closing discussion
18:15 Reception with snacks and drinks