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Country: United Kingdom
1 Projects, page 1 of 1
  • Funder: French National Research Agency (ANR) Project Code: ANR-18-MRS1-0019
    Funder Contribution: 29,999.2 EUR

    The NETTREE proposal will be submitted to the SFS-28 2019 call, which revolves around the improvement (“adding value”) of the quality of information attached to collections of genetic material in Europe. We will focus on the existing network of forests tree Genetic Conservation Units (GCU), a well-established conservation network relying on the identification of natural forest stands of high value, under the coordination of the EU-wide EUFORGEN program, devoted to the protection of European forests and to dissemination of information. GCUs preserve a forest species’ genetic diversity and adaptive potential, so the purpose of European forestry conservation programs is to identify ways to grant the long-term viability of GCU stands. The EU-level monitoring and data collection on GCUs is supervised by EUFORGEN through the EUFGIS information system. In spite of the clarity of objectives of EUFORGEN and of GCUs, methods to identify GCUs are not stardardised across European countries; information attached to each GCU is frequently rudimentary and lacks further interpretation or treatment, thus preventing managers from making sense (and use) of it; indicators of resilience, as well as of potential for breeding for economically or ecologically useful traits, are missing altogether for most GCUs. In this respect, there is a pressing need to “add value” to GCUs and the corresponding information system, making it a more effective monitoring network and a useful resource for conservationists, managers, and breeders. In agreement with the call text, our proposal aims to (a) fill gaps in EUFGIS (e.g., missing ecological information, risk indicators including climatic and societal threats), and update its structure to accommodate the types of information listed below; (b) fill gaps in the GCU network, particularly for eco-regions that are GCU-poor, by suggesting new GCUs, and establish criteria for how to identify new, valid GCUs, including by making use of the information listed below; (c) improve & intensify genotypic and phenotypic information attached to the GCUs, by proposing a standardised set of traits and types of genetic information that should be acquired on all GCUs; this will focus particularly on genomic approaches and on stable (“hard”) traits that respond to different components of climate change (CC) in different eco-regions (e.g., drought in the South, phenological offset in the North); (d) provide standardised indicators of the short-, medium-, and long-term viability of GCUs based on the information collected at points (a)-(c); these will be provided as multidimensional indicators taking into account multiple components of risk and adaptive potential; (e) model the adaptive and plastic response of individual stands to CC, based on information gathered in (c), through individual-based models, thus providing indicators of resilience on the short, medium, and long term; we will rely on extant models, which permit to predict the fate of a population based on the (genetic, physiological, ecological) properties of real or simulated individuals that compose it; (f) provide and test protocols for the collection of data as per points (a)-(c) by the end-user, so that the characterisation of GCUs can be autonomously operated by forest managers; such protocols will propose the end-user standardised methods to collect samples and to interact with specialists who will produce the necessary data; (g) provide a user-friendly interface (linked to EUFGIS) that will allow the end-user to compute indicators and resilience predictions as in points (d) and (e), based on the data obtained in (f), as a support for decision-making on the choice and management of GCUs. The network's activities have already started on partners' own resources, with the setting up of the core network in December 2017-March 2018, and a 3-day meeting (INIA, Madrid, 16-18 April 2018) to establish the work plan and to identify work packages and work package leaders.

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