Global Terrestrial Ecosystems
IIASA’s Forestry Program (FOR) addresses these key challenges: management of global terrestrial ecosystems (including the forest sector) and interactions with other sectors in the context of global change: specifically climate change, deforestation, food security, land use competition, bioenergy and others; and how to enable terrestrial ecosystems to positively contribute to socioeconomic development. These objectives are addressed under broad Research Themes:

Global Terrestrial Ecosystems: research into the exchange of GHGs between terrestrial ecosystems and the atmosphere both globally and regionally, accounting for uncertainties. Options such as mitigation, adaptation, avoided deforestation and bioenergy are explored.

Emerging Economies & Governance : China, India, Brazil, Congo Basin, and the Koreas... bringing FOR research results into the sector’s policy and governance processes.

Research, News & Events
The extent of deforestation in tropical countries is linked to six quality of governance factors that range from control of corruption, to political stability, according to IIASA FOR and the FAO.  The analysis, published in Environmental Science & Policy, suggests these factors could be used to identify the country's status among other nations and to assess national progress to reduce deforestation. See REDD for related info.

IIASA FOR contributed to a special issue of the journal Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B, using IIASA FOR’s GLOBIOM model to illustrate land use projection uncertainties.

IIASA forestry scientists discussed the crucial role of forests and the tools for advanced integrated forest management in a side meeting on August 25, 2010 at the XXIII World Congress of the IUFRO in Seoul, Korea. Poster | Schedule

Research led by FOR and Beijing University published in PNAS 12 Apr, 2010, indicates that globally, two-fifths of nitrogen used in agriculture is lost to ecosystems.

FOR in Nature News model predicts deforestation

An article in Science co-authored by FOR, explains that accounting rules in the Kyoto Protocol treat all bioenergy as carbon neutral, regardless of the biomass source, which may cause large differences in net emissions. more