Open Fellowship Application: Providing information on natural disturbance risks to forests to enhance risk management in the forest sector

该项目将提供有关自然干扰对森林威胁的科学证据，以支持全球林业利益攸关方加强风险评估。这些人包括森林管理者、投资者、保险公司、森林碳标准和政策制定者。更好的信息将支持制定政策和实践，以提高抵御能力和减少森林损失；创造更好的保险产品来保护森林资产；通过加强风险评估，帮助保护森林投资以及商业森林木材和碳排放部门。森林面临的自然干扰风险包括风、火、干旱、病虫害和雪。Davies在之前的四个知识交流项目中担任研究员。头两个项目确定了在这一领域工作的学者，并在整个森林部门建立了600多个联络点的网络。通过一系列简报、讲习班和一个网站，向这些联络人宣传了学术工作。在为金融受众量化病虫害和干旱风险的方法方面，发现了科学上的差距。这导致了NERC Pure Associates方案资助的两个项目。第一项研究创造了一种创新的方法来评估病虫害对英国林地的风险。第二项研究进一步发展了这一方法，并从森林研究的干旱模型中获得产出，用于英国保险、森林碳和森林管理目的。该奖学金旨在利用迄今为止收集的现有专业知识和资源，在这些项目的基础上，对学术研究进行改编、翻译和推广。针对每种自然干扰的主要项目目标如下：病虫害：DEFRA、FERA、林业委员会和ConFor有兴趣与Davies合作，修改她的病虫害模型，以协助作出物种选择的决定，并评估病虫害的经济威胁。火：许多nerc赞助的学者(包括伍斯特/托马斯（KCL）；Balzter(莱斯特);McMorrow(曼彻斯特);Mitchard（爱丁堡）和Morison/Moffat（森林研究）正在开发新技术，从遥感信息和火灾天气/危险指数中获得长期火灾历史和影响分析。将通过有针对性的讲习班提供支助，以发展合作和筹措资金，以适当规模应用这些技术，并满足森林听众的要求。风：森林研究的forestgale模型，正在与Locatelli和Patenaude（爱丁堡）一起开发，可以计算出破坏树木的风的返回间隔。它专注于商业针叶树，但新的功能支持落叶树。一个简化的版本提供了区域尺度的风风险预测，并且正在开发关于脆弱性的新功能（即森林林分受损的数量）。该模型在评估没有长期损失记录的新地点的森林项目面临的风风险方面特别有用。戴维斯将努力向国际观众推广新功能，并确保它满足他们的信息需求。她还将支持增加有关雪害的新功能，这需要与具有雪害专业知识的学者开展合作。干旱：nerc资助的爱丁堡学者（Meir, Grace, menuccini, Dexter）；埃克塞特（罗兰）和皇家植物园（彭宁顿）正在调查干旱。戴维斯将根据他们关于树种耐旱范围的发现，为森林项目提供物种选择建议，以减少未来损失的风险。他们关于死亡率机制的工作可以提供关于水分不足和温度阈值的关键信息，以支持为该部门制定更好的死亡率模型。

The project will provide scientific evidence on the threat to forests from natural disturbances to support enhanced risk assessment by stakeholders in global forestry. These include forest managers, investors, insurers, forest carbon standards and policy makers. Better information will support the development of policy and practice to increase resilience and reduce forest losses; the creation of better insurance products to protect forest assets; and help safeguard forest investments and the commercial forest timber and carbon sectors through enhanced risk assessment. Natural disturbance risks to forest include wind, fire, drought, pest and diseases and snow. Davies has been a researcher on four previous knowledge exchange projects. The first two identified academics working in this area and established a network of over 600 contacts across the forest sector. Academic work was promoted to these contacts through a series of briefs, workshops and a website. A gap was identified in the science, for methods to quantify the risks from pest and diseases and drought for the finance audience. This led to two projects, funded under the NERC Pure Associates programme. The first created an innovative new approach to assessing the risk to UK woodlands from pest and diseases. The second further developed this approach and outputs from Forest Research's drought model for UK insurance, forest carbon and forest management purposes. The Fellowship aims to build on these projects, using existing expertise and resources gathered to date, to adapt, translate and promote academic research to this audience. The main project aims for each natural disturbance are as follows:Pest and Diseases: DEFRA, FERA, the Forestry Commission, and ConFor are interested in working with Davies to adapt her pest and disease model to assist in decisions on species selection, and assessments of the economic threat from pests and diseases.Fire: Many NERC-sponsored academics (including Wooster/Thomas (KCL); Balzter (Leicester); McMorrow (Manchester); Mitchard (Edinburgh)) and Morison/Moffat (Forest Research), are developing new techniques to derive long-term fire histories and impact analyses from remotely sensed information and fire weather/danger indices. Support would be provided through tailored workshops to develop collaborations and source funding to apply these techniques at appropriate scale and to meet the requirements of the forest audience.Wind: Forest Research's ForestGALEs model, being developed with Locatelli and Patenaude (Edinburgh), produces return intervals for winds that damage trees. It focuses on commercial conifers but new functionality supports deciduous trees. A simplified version provides regional scale wind risk forecasts and new functionality is being developed on vulnerability (i.e. the amount of a forest stand damaged). The model has particular use in assessing the wind risk facing forest projects in new locations without long-term loss records. Davies would work to promote the new functionality to an international audience and ensure it meets their information requirements. She would also support the addition of new functionality on snow risk, which requires the development of a collaboration with academics with snow expertise. Drought: NERC-sponsored academics at Edinburgh (Meir, Grace, Mencuccini, Dexter); Exeter (Rowland) and the Royal Botanic Garden (Pennington) are investigating drought. Davies would adapt their findings on the drought tolerance ranges of tree species to provide species selection advice to forest projects to reduce the risk of future losses. Their work on mortality mechanisms could provide critical information on moisture deficit and temperature thresholds required for to underpin the development of better mortality models for the sector.