SURVEY

Forests are an indispensable natural sink for greenhouse gases and provide a wide range of ecosystem services. Climate change is fundamentally altering these ecosystems, which is why their management must be continuously adapted to changing conditions. Real-world laboratories provide an important infrastructure for interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary transformation research on the path toward
toward the forest of the future.

The SURVEY collaborative project is based on a network of spatially distributed experimental plots in the Harz Mountains and the LMU Forest, which differ in terms of land-use intensity and the intensity of research activities. Supplemented by model-based projections and additional geodata in data rooms and synthesis platforms, this creates a supraregional real-world forest laboratory for the spruce-dominated, highly damage-prone low mountain range region with a particularly high need for transformation. A central element of the project is the comprehensive involvement of relevant stakeholder groups, which takes place at three levels of cooperation:

• Co-creation: Stakeholders actively participate in shaping and further developing
  the Forest Real Lab.
• Co-production: Collaborative research within research-practice networks strengthens the practical relevance of scientific findings.
• Co-evaluation: Key stakeholder groups assess the resulting ecosystem services in light of societal expectations and transformation goals.

A key objective of the LMU subproject is to develop spatiotemporal models for deriving stress responses from in situ measurement data, LiDAR, and multispectral and thermal drone remote sensing data. The focus is on assessing evapotranspiration, stress, and mortality in spruce stands.