Autumn School « Global Forests – 2025 » – Ecological and Societal Impacts of Changing Forest Land Uses
Picture by Alain Audet from Pixabay
Please note that the Autumn School will take place at the Maison Française in Oxford from 13 to 16 October 2025.
Download the full description and the application form here.
Global Forests: new multidisciplinary challenges for forest management
"Global Forests" is an autumn school for doctoral and post-doctoral students whose research focuses on forest issues and coming from all scientific disciplines. The autumn school aims to offer a time for scientific exchange and training to a multi-disciplinary group of young scientists. A large place is given to forestry issues in the South and early carrier researchers from the South are strongly invited to participate.
Conveners: GIP ECOFOR; Maison Française d’Oxford; Higher Education Research and Innovation Department of the French Embassy in London; In partnership with UMIFRE “Institut Français de Pondichéry”
Organisation Committee: Maya Leroy (AgroParisTech), Nicolas Picard (ECOFOR), Pascal Marty (CNRS et U. Paris 1, MFO), Pierre-Michel Forget (Museum National d’Histoire Naturelle), Guillaume Lescuyer (CIRAD) , Paul Bresteaux (ECOFOR)
Scientific Committee: ECOFOR Scientific Committee
Context
Forest areas are constantly changing, at all spatial and temporal scales. According to the available data, forest area on a global scale has been declining for several centuries. Behind this global trend lies a diversity of forest dynamics depending on regional contexts. In particular, there are significant differences between temperate forests, which have been gaining ground for several decades, and tropical forests, where deforestation continues. These forest dynamics are essentially driven by anthropogenic factors: long-term transformations in the economy and their consequences for land use, and the effects of international trade on agricultural production. Indeed, the ongoing decline in global forest area can primarily be attributed to land grabbing and the advancement of ‘pioneer fronts’, particularly ‘agricultural fronts’.
In a global context marked by climate change, continuing population growth and far-reaching geopolitical and economic changes, forest areas are particularly strategic. But contradictory logics mean that contrasting uses coexist. Clearing land for crop cultivation, but also preserving or extending woodland, is justified in the name of the transition to a more sustainable development model.
These forest dynamics and the resulting changes in forest land use inevitably have consequences, including the erosion of biodiversity, carbon depletion, and harm to the well-being of forestdwelling populations. These impacts are experienced at every level, from local to global. They are producing effects that are felt at long distances from the places where the changes in use are taking place. From this point of view, changes in land use are part of global environmental change.
During this autumn school, we will be focusing on the ecological and societal impacts of these changes in land use. What are they, and how can they be described and measured? What links do they have with human activities and what types of processes are involved? What interplay of scales is at work? Are existing models sufficient to account for these processes and their effects? Do new studies offer new ways of looking at the problem, can patterns be identified? Submissions should emphasise an interdisciplinary approach to these issues, in support of Global Forests' ambition to bring together doctoral students from a range of disciplines in order to explore and develop new areas of research.
Objectives
In this context, the GIP Ecofor and its partners are organising an autumn school for PhD students and post-doctoral fellows:
- focused on contemporary fundamental and applied problems in forests,
- including all type of forests,
- cross-disciplinary,
- involving students from institutions in the South and the North.
The objective is to bring together an international and interdisciplinary group of students and to make possible :
1. A reflection on biodiversity issues, management tools, knowledge acquisition and development, monitoring and assessment systems, practices and usages;
2. Exchanges of experience;
3. A circulation of theoretical and technical models.
This autumn school is supported by several institutions:
1. The GIP ECOFOR, a multi-partner transversal network whose objectives are the production and dissemination of knowledge, and support for public policies on all subjects related to forests and timber sectors and non-timber forest products sector. Tropical forests are a central issue for several members of GIP ECOFOR such as CIRAD, IRD, AgroParisTech, CNRS and the Museum National d'Histoire Naturelle;
2. Units of the UMIFRE network, whose governing bodies are the CNRS and the Ministry of Europe and Foreign Affairs: Maison Française d'Oxford-MFO and Institut Français de Pondichéry (IFP) ;
3. The Higher Education, Research and Innovation Department of the French Embassy in the United Kingdom.
