1. Name des Wissenschaftlers ICP FORESTS NETWORK – A MONITORING AND RESEARCH PLATFORM Walter Seidling, Thünen Institute of Forest Ecosystems Task Force Meeting 2016 of ICP Vegetation Seidling

2. Name des Wissenschaftlers Forests need long-term planning based on monitoring 1-3/03/2016 Seite 2 Task Force Meeting ICP Vegetation, Dubna / Russia Forests provide timber and various other benefits for human societies including climate change mitigation effects. The longevity of its dominant elements, the trees, requires long rotation periods of commercial forests. This makes careful planning indispensable. And planning needs monitoring, as a decision base

3. Name des Wissenschaftlers Forests need long-term planning based on monitoring Impacts of air pollutants and adverse climatic conditions along with relevant biotic interactions need to be adequately monitored, evaluated and reported. As monitoring continues, time-series evolve, providing opportunities for revising old hypotheses, once given cause to start with the monitoring activities. 1-3/03/2016 Seite 3 Task Force Meeting ICP Vegetation, Dubna / Russia

4. Name des Wissenschaftlers Level I ex- tensive network active plots in 2014 1-3/03/2016 Seite 4 Task Force Meeting ICP Vegetation, Dubna / Russia from Michel& Seidling 2015 crown condition soil solid phase foliar element content

5. Name des Wissenschaftlers Agenda #2 1-3/03/2016 Seite 5 Task Force Meeting ICP Vegetation, Dubna / Russia

6. Name des Wissenschaftlers Trend analyses main tree species in Europe 1-3/03/2016 Seite 6 Task Force Meeting ICP Vegetation, Dubna / Russia

7. Name des Wissenschaftlers Trend crown condition in oak and trend in sulphur deposition / air concentration 1-3/03/2016 Seite 7 Task Force Meeting ICP Vegetation, Dubna / Russia Conclusion: Under the environmental condition in the last 20 years a direct and positive relationship between worsening of crown condition in nemoral oaks and deposition of sulphate in precipitation respectively air concentration of sulphur dioxid can not be found as suggested 30 years ago.

8. Name des Wissenschaftlers Defoliation and air temperature 1-3/03/2016 Seite 8 Task Force Meeting ICP Vegetation, Dubna / Russia Besides the revision of old hypotheses on air pollutants and its effects on forests, new research questions have appeared, especially in connection with the climate change.

9. Name des Wissenschaftlers Conclusion: no simple relationships 1-3/03/2016 Seite 9 Task Force Meeting ICP Vegetation, Dubna / Russia Answers for questions concerning tree condition or performance often need new, not readily available data. Combining data from the monitoring with datasets from different sources and from remotely sensed data might give opportunities to scrutinize upcoming hypotheses. In other cases new parameters have to be assessed. It seems more than reasonable to attach such new assessments to the existing physical infrastructure and use at the same time old data series from the same sites in order to gain higher momentum for explorative and inferential approaches or even mechanistic modelling (e.g. Fischer et al. 2011). Co-location seems to be a strong prerequisite for inferential data analysis. Of course, data included in such analyses have to be of high quality. Fischer R, Aas W, De Vries W, Clarke N, Cudlin P, Leaver D, Lundin L, Matteucci G, Matyssek R, Mikkelsen TN, Mirtl M, Öztürk Y, Papale D, Potočić N, Simpson D, Tuovinen JP, Vesala T, Wieser G, Paoletti E, 2011: Towards a transnational system of supersites for forest monitoring and research in Europe - an overview on present state and future recommendations. iForest 4: 167-171

10. Name des Wissenschaftlers Survey performed (ideally) at Level II plots 1-3/03/2016 Seite 10 Task Force Meeting ICP Vegetation, Dubna / Russia SurveyLevel II, standardLevel II, core Air quality continuously Crown condition (i.e. defoliation, discolouration, tree damage) annually Depositioncontinuously Foliar chemistryevery 2 years Ground vegetation diversityevery 5 years Ground vegetation biomass x Litterfall continuously Meteorologycontinuously Ozone induced injury continuously Soil conditionevery 10 years Soil solution chemistry continuously Soil water continuously Tree growthevery 5 yearsannually Tree phenology several times / year

11. Name des Wissenschaftlers Level II plots focusing on meteo and deposition data 1-3/03/2016 Seite 11 Task Force Meeting ICP Vegetation, Dubna / Russia n = 164 n = 207 n = 128 n all = 618

12. Name des Wissenschaftlers Level II plots focusing on foliar and soil solution data 1-3/03/2016 Seite 12 Task Force Meeting ICP Vegetation, Dubna / Russia n = 150 n = 129 n = 91 n all = 618

13. Name des Wissenschaftlers Co-location: mutual benefits can be expected 1-3/03/2016 Seite 13 Task Force Meeting ICP Vegetation, Dubna / Russia ICP IM ICP Vegetation, moss survey ICP M&MICP Waters LTER / E-LTER LTER / E-LTER proposed 42 (11.7%)69 (19.2%)33 (9.2%)37 (10.3%)81 (22.6%)9 (2.5%) Tab. 2.4: Co-location or co-operation with infrastructure of other ICPs of 358 active Level II plots; information according to an inquiry among NFCs of ICP Forests in September 2015, with a response rate of 57%.

14. Name des Wissenschaftlers Additional assessments at Level II sites Additional assessments can often not provided by the institutions maintaining the monitoring infrastructure. Only collaborations with specialists can enable respective investigations. At national level, single ICP Forests plots are already part of various co-operations. Two examples at Europoean level: 1) ForestBiota Pilot Study (EU Forest Focus C Project) -Epiphytic Lichens -Dead wood -Stand structure -(Gound vegetation) 1-3/03/2016 Seite 14 Task Force Meeting ICP Vegetation, Dubna / Russia

15. Name des Wissenschaftlers Lichens 1-3/03/2016 Seite 15 Task Force Meeting ICP Vegetation, Dubna / Russia GIORDANI, P., CALATAYUD, V., STOFER, S., SEIDLING, W., GRANKE, O., FISCHER, R., 2014: Detecting the nitrogen critical loads on European forests by means of epiphytic lichens. A signal-to- noise evaluation. For. Ecol. Manage. 311: 29- 40 2.4 kg ha -1 y -1

16. Name des Wissenschaftlers Additional assessments at Level II sites 2.) A mycorrhiza project financed by UK Emperial Institute is another successful example for collaboration and has already gained new insights (Cox et al. 2010, Suz et al. 2014, van der Linde et al. in prep). This is an example of both, virtual access to our data and physical access to our plot Cox F, Barsoum N, Lilleskov EA, Bidartondo MI, 2010: Nitrogen availability is a primary determinant of conifer mycorrhizas across complex environmental gradients. Ecol. Lett. 13:1103–1113. Suz LM, Barsoum N, Benham S, Dietrich HP, Fetzer KD, Fischer R, García P, Gehrman J, Kristöfel F, Manninger M, Neagu S, Nicolas M, Oldenburger J, Raspe S, Sánchez G, Schröck HW, Schubert A, Verheyen K, Verstraeten A, Bidartondo MI, 2014: Environmental drivers of ectomycorrhizal communities in Europe's temperate oak forests. Molecular Ecology 23: 5628-5644. 1-3/03/2016 Seite 16 Task Force Meeting ICP Vegetation, Dubna / Russia

17. Name des Wissenschaftlers Mycorrhiza probes taken at Level II plots Source: van der Linde, not published 1-3/03/2016 Seite 17 Task Force Meeting ICP Vegetation, Dubna / Russia

18. Name des Wissenschaftlers European-wide collaborations aspired Similarly, projects could be linked to the ICP Forests plots. Possibly in the context of larger international research infrastructures in forests or more general in terrestrial ecosystems. The participation in research infrastructure initiatives (H2020 INFRAIA – ForAccess – consortium) seem to be a promising option in this respect. 1-3/03/2016 Seite 18 Task Force Meeting ICP Vegetation, Dubna / Russia

19. Name des Wissenschaftlers 1-3/03/2016 Seite 19 Task Force Meeting ICP Vegetation, Dubna / Russia could be vision for forests and other more natural vegetation too

20. Name des Wissenschaftlers SWOT: Strenghs and weaknesses (internal factores) opportunities and threats (exernal factors) Weakness: Data Quality can be a weak point Surely hampers co-operation with partners; What can be done? It is an experience that data sets contain both erroneous single entries and systematically wrong data. Of course, it is best, if such errors a detected as early as possible. ICP Forests has developed a extensive apparatus for error detection as documented in the manual. Latest during data submission, many errors should be detected by installed plausibility checks. 1-3/03/2016 Seite 20 Task Force Meeting ICP Vegetation, Dubna / Russia

21. Name des Wissenschaftlers ICP Forests Ground Vegetation Intercomparison 1-3/03/2016 Seite 21 Task Force Meeting ICP Vegetation, Dubna / Russia

22. Name des Wissenschaftlers 1-3/03/2016 Seite 22 Task Force Meeting ICP Vegetation, Dubna / Russia

23. Name des Wissenschaftlers Online and post hoc data checks 1-3/03/2016 Seite 23 Task Force Meeting ICP Vegetation, Dubna / Russia

24. Name des Wissenschaftlers Data quality – a permanent challenge -However, those checks cover never all eventualities and have to be continually developed further -Checks both, in the field and in the laboratory (ring tests), also described in the Manual, have to be applied and further developed. -if errors in the database become known, effective feedback mechanisms have to be applied; here the problem of slow and scattered communication is evident. 1-3/03/2016 Seite 24 Task Force Meeting ICP Vegetation, Dubna / Russia

25. Name des Wissenschaftlers Tank you to all contributors to ICP Forests and for your interest. 1-3/03/2016 Seite 25 Task Force Meeting ICP Vegetation, Dubna / Russia