Introduction

Carbon sequestration by forest ecosystems has attracted much interest as a mitigation approach, as it can be considered as a relatively inexpensive option to address climate change in the short- medium- and long term. Forest lands, covered by the regulation on land use, land-use changes and forestry, are expected to contribute to the achievement of Europe’s climate ambition for 2030. As shown in the in-depth analysis in support of the “Clean Planet for all” communication, this contribution needs to be increasing to achieve climate neutrality by 2050.

Scope

– Forest managers adapting to sustainable management practices in view of climate change, bioeconomy, genetic diversity and biodiversity objectives;

– Improved knowledge on scenarios and sustainable pathways for forestry and the forest-based sector including measures and management strategies taking into account regional differences in Europe and changes in species composition;

– Increased forest-based carbon removals through forest management practices and uses of long-lived wood products;

– Better understanding on how forest management impacts carbon sequestration in comparison to non-managed forests;

– Pathways to achieve the ambition of the Paris Agreement ambition to limit climate warming;

– Transfer of knowledge from science to practice (good practice).

Objective

– Contribute to a better understanding of favourable management practices for both soil and vegetation, within-species genetic diversity upon, species selection and rotations to enhance and climate-proof forest carbon stocks and sinks.
– Consider the dynamics of the carbon stored in the different poolsunder different forest management regimes and at different scales (EU-wide, national, local) to identify possible adaptations to current European models of sustainable forest management.
– Improve the integration of European forests, including forest practices, in global and regional climate modelling.
– Contribute to progress in the certification and authenticity verification of carbon removals that are nature-based or through the forest biomass used for longer-lived and higher-substitution products.
– Design and monitor the efficacy of forest-based mitigation plans, combining the growing potential of satellite-based remote sensing with surface monitoring.
– Develop recommendations for up-take in practice, including specifying which silvicultural measures to apply to which types of forest in order to maximise their mitigation potential.
– Analyse socio-economic aspects of forest-based mitigation strategies, including forest managers’ and users’ perception and factors influencing their decision making such as consumer choices, sectorial integration and international/domestic competition.
– Improve knowledge on the environmental integrity, the social acceptability and the economic feasibility of forest-based mitigation actions such as afforestation, reforestation, forest restoration, forest protection, sustainable forest management and enhanced wood harvest and use, especially for long-lived products.

Introduction

Adaptation and increased resilience of forests is essential for the forests to maintain their function as carbon sinks, to protect existing stocks and to ensure that forests will continue to provide important ecosystem services and to support the forest-based bioeconomy. Due to the high variation of European and Chinese forests, diversity of landscapes as well as governance and ownership structures, adaptation strategies need to be adapted to regional conditions and circumstances, with focus on the most vulnerable forests in climate change hotspots.

Scope

– Strengthened international cooperation with actors from China in the areas of forest adaptation to climate change

– Comprehensive knowledge base on the impact of climate change on forests and their capacity to adapt

– Increased adaptation efforts in climate change hotspots in the EU/associated countries (mountains, Mediterranean, Northern Scandinavian Peninsula, Central and Eastern Europe, outermost regions) and China

– Informed decision-making by forest managers adopting sustainable forest management practices.

– Knowledge transfer and capacity building at science-policy-practice interface.

Objectives

– Develop and refine projections at regional scale, improve the modelling of effects on natural vegetation, both at individual and ecosystem level and support science-based decisions with a view to the sustainable management of forests, including activities related to afforestation, reforestation and regeneration.
– Design adaptation plans to increase the resilience of forests by active management of the species composition and the genetic diversity within these species (including through assisted species migration, and forest regeneration and afforestation with species already adapted and / or further improved to tolerate or even benefit from future climate conditions) while supporting forest production and ecosystem services under climate change in the various regions and forest types of Europe.
– Analyse socio-economic aspects of forest adaptation, including forest managers’ and users’ perception and factors influencing their decision making such as consumer choices, sectorial integration and international/domestic competition and analyse the potential of incentives and tools to reach forest managers and to encourage changes towards preventive strategies/measures by taking into account the different forms of forest governance and ownership.

Intro

Security research related to infrastructure protection has been traditionally following a sectorial approach. With more and more infrastructure systems being interconnected, a stronger focus on the systemic dimension and complexity of attacks and disruptions by cyber or physical means needs to be applied.

Scope

Some essential sectors of the economy need uninterrupted access to the high-quality position and timing information provided for free by satellite navigation systems. Despite the fact that satellite navigation systems such as Galileo are made ever more robust towards risks and disruptions both in terms of ground segments as well as space assets, there remain residual vulnerabilities that cannot not be coped with when facing the emergence of new challenges. These critical sectors should therefore develop complementary positioning and/or timing solutions that are able to sustain a sudden disruption of GNSS service.

Objectives

– Improved large-scale vulnerability assessments of EU Member States’ (MS) or Associated Countries’ (AC) key infrastructures

– Improved cooperation to counter Hybrid Threats and subsequent large-scale disruptions of infrastructures in Europe

– Improved concepts and instruments for the anticipation of systemic risks to European infrastructure, allowing for comprehensive long-term risk assessments, with regards to climate change, technological trends, foreign direct investment (FDI) and dependence on critical supplies from non-EU countries

– Improved risk, vulnerability and complexity related assessments for interconnected physical-digital European infrastructures

– Terrestrial back-up/alternative PNT solutions to ensure continuous operation of Critical Infrastructure in case of the disruption of GNSS services or other essential services

– Enabling the decentralisation of large infrastructure to mitigate vulnerability in case of largescale disruptions

– Enhanced preparedness and response by definition of operational procedures of both private and public infrastructure operators as well as public authorities considering citizens involvement

Intro

DNA-based identification systems can track biodiversity change at large geographic scales and reveal the interactions among the species in a biome. On the other hand, fully sequencing life, including, when relevant, information on symbiotic organisms, microbiomes and parasites, is expected to provide new tools for the conservation, preservation and regeneration of biodiversity, drug discovery and advanced biotechnology.

Scope

– Set up one or both European hubs for iBoL and/or EBP
– Leverage resources and expertise to advance in the completion the barcoding and/or sequencing of European biodiversity in a smart and efficient way
– Contribute to the EU Biodiversity Strategy for 2030 by generating the reference genomes of the representative species across the tree of life, leveraging the existing genome sequencing facilities

Objective

– Creation and management of the European node of the International Barcode of Life
– Creation of a European hub affiliated to the Earth Biogenome Project
– Set up the necessary networks, technologies, quality standards, reference atlas and taxonomic expertise through Europe
– Advances in the assessment of pan-European biodiversity via genome sequencing and/or DNA barcoding of threatened/endangered species, ecologically through barcoding and/or genome sequencing (animals, plants, fungi and microorganisms), ecological keystone species and economically important species
– Pan-European barcoding of pollinators by completing the Barcode of Life for European bees, butterflies, moths and hoverflies.
– Leverage active support and cooperation of citizen scientists and other non-professional taxonomists

Introduction

Provide ground-breaking advances iin view of coping with “extreme data”, i.e. data that exhibits one or more of the following characteristics, to an extent that makes current technologies fail – increasing volume, speed, variety; complexity/diversity/multilinguality of data; the dispersed data sources; sparse/missing/insufficient data/extreme variations in values

Scope

The actions should address the integration of relevant technologies (e.g. big data, AI, IoT, HPC, edge/fog/cloud computing, language technologies, cybersecurity, telecommunications, autonomous systems etc.) as a means towards achieving the goals, and foster links to the respective research, industrial and user/innovator communities

Objectives

provide better technologies, tools and solutions for data mining of large, constantly growing amounts and varieties of data, and/or extremely sparse/dispersed/heterogeneous/multilingual data, in particular IoT, industrial, business, administrative, environmental, scientific or societal data