EUFORGEN Webinar - Mechanisms of natural and anthropogenic selection on trees in the forest: consequences for climate change adaptation strategies
11 April 2025. 11:00 - 12:00 CET. Online
How does natural selection shape tree populations in forests? How do human interventions, such as thinning and forest management, influence the adaptive capacity of trees in response to climate change? Can forest management strategies harness natural selection to enhance resilience to environmental stresses like drought? These and many other key questions will be explored in a new EUFORGEN webinar organised in collaboration with the Horizon Europe OptFORESTS project.
The session will review recent insights into how selection operates on trees: at what scale, how quickly tree populations respond, and how forest management practices interact with selection processes. The webinar will also explore how evolutionary processes can be integrated into forest management decisions using model-based simulation tools, helping to develop evolution-oriented forest management strategies that promote long-term forest resilience and sustainability.
The speaker for this webinar is François Lefèvre, a geneticist at the National Research Institute for Agriculture, Food and the Environment (INRAE, France), based in the Mediterranean Forest Ecology research unit (URFM) in Avignon. In addition to his research, François serves as the president of the French Commission on Forest Genetic Resources (CRGF) and as the national coordinator for France in the EUFORGEN programme. With a background in quantitative and population genetics, François has led interdisciplinary research focusing on the impacts of forest management on both the short-term performance and long-term adaptive capacity of forests in the context of climate change, within a broader framework of social-ecological approaches. The presentation for this webinar will be co-authored with Victor Fririon.
The recording of the webinar will be made available on YouTube after its completion and can be used as training content.
