SuCCEss COdE

The project proposal supported by our European consortium aims to respond to the European call H2020 LC-SFS-22-2020: Forest Soils Research and Innovation Action. It is part of the worrying context of climate change and more generally of global changes affecting European forest ecosystems. Our research project is positioned within the general framework of a better knowledge of the multifunctionality and processes of forest soils in a perspective of their sustainable management, while integrating their potential to mitigate climate change. Through a collective action aiming at (i) facilitating access to resources and data on instrumented sites, national observation and experimentation networks, inventories, (ii) integrating the analytical forces on a European scale ("flagship" laboratories) and (iii) developing innovative methods to characterize soil properties and map them (high throughput), our research will cover most of the environmental and management heterogeneity of European forests (different pedo-climates, silvicultures, species and associated mycorrhizal phenotype, natural disturbances such as fires, storms, etc.). The project brings together researchers from 18 European countries with a disciplinary coverage that fulfils the scientific and technical objectives of the proposal call with soil sciences, forestry, modeling, stand dynamics, community ecology, functional ecology, microbiology, biogeochemistry, metrology and development of decision support tools. The work that will be achieved during the preparation of the H2020 call response will go beyond the constitution of the consortium and the deposit of the project. From an academic point of view, our ambition is to produce position papers before the project submission (or concomitantly with the first phase) to demonstrate the call reviewers that the consortium is working, and that the vision we share is at the cutting edge of the current research in forest soil functioning and management. On the partnership side, one of the success criteria for this financing will also be the involvement of private companies in the project. The expected impacts are (i) improved and harmonized methodologies for estimating greenhouse gas emissions and carbon sinks in the LULUCF sector at European level, (ii) strengthening the knowledge and capacity of foresters to adopt silvicultural techniques and forest management practices that are conducive to climate change mitigation goals, while strengthening biodiversity, resilience and the overall provision of soil ecosystem services, (iii) more sustainable forest management, taking into account soil processes and functions and a strong contribution from the forest sector to increasing and diversifying societal demands for products and services.