Solutions
Precilience is a Horizon Europe project developing climate adaptation solutions for the forestry sector in the boreal regions of Denmark, Estonia, Finland, Norway and Sweden. Boreal forests face escalating pressures from rising temperatures, water stress, changing weather patterns and unsustainable forestry practices such as species monocultures and clear-cutting. These factors are already contributing to the spread of pests, pathogens and disease. The project’s ultimate goal is to enable participating regions to become frontrunners in building climate resilience by testing and demonstrating transformative, nature-based solutions together with regional stakeholders, ensuring that outcomes are grounded in local realities and scalable across the Nordic-Baltic region. The solutions put forward through this project are as follows.
- Mixed-species regeneration: Trialling mixed coniferous and deciduous regeneration stands to enhance forest health and resilience against pests, diseases and drought compared to single-species monocultures.
- Adaptive forest management: Implementing closer-to-nature practices such as continuous cover forestry, selective cutting and shelterwood systems to link management methods with forest health and biodiversity outcomes.
- Precision forestry: Utilising forest harvester-based position mapping to detect decay-affected spruce trees and inform precision planting of the next tree generation, thereby minimising the transfer of pathogens.
- Assisted gene flow: Conducting clone trials across boreal countries to identify pine and spruce genotypes better suited to warmer, drier future climates, supporting the development of new deployment recommendations.
- Disturbance risk education and knowledge transfer: Organising field visits and webinars on sites illustrating severe disturbances to demonstrate how forest structure and management decisions influence damage risks, educating stakeholders on how to avoid regeneration decisions that increase future damage susceptibility.
- Landslide management: Norway is demonstrating the use of continuous cover forestry and cable yarding on slopes to maintain root reinforcement and reduce hydraulic loading, mitigating landslide risks associated with clear-felling.
- Stakeholder co-creation: Establishing national stakeholder steering groups, organising field demonstrations and hosting workshops to ensure that solutions are co developed with forest owners and practitioners and integrated into practical forest management.
Co-benefits
Economic
The Precilience project aims at delivering significant economic co-benefits by supporting the preservation of the timber economy while unlocking new revenue streams. Regional stakeholder narratives identify emerging carbon and biodiversity markets, hunting leases, rental activities and markets for climate-related wood products as alternative income sources. By implementing adaptive management practices that reduce the frequency and severity of disturbances such as bark beetle outbreaks and storm aftermaths, the project helps lower management costs and damage expenses. Additionally, longer growing seasons present opportunities for increased forest productivity and yield, enhancing the long-term economic viability of boreal forests.
Social
The Precilience project aims at delivering significant social co-benefits by prioritising empowerment, inclusion and community well-being. Through its co-creation approach, stakeholders ranging from forest owners to policymakers actively shape adaptation strategies, fostering ownership and building trust between science, policy and practice. The project applies principles of broad inclusion, ensuring gender balance and accommodating diverse identities in engagement activities. Capacity building occurs through education events like field visits and webinars, equipping practitioners with knowledge to manage climate risks. Strengthened peer networks reduce the mental strain and isolation often linked to climate uncertainty, while fair compensation models for landowners acknowledge their contribution. Additionally, the initiative supports intergenerational sustainability by helping stakeholders secure forest viability for future generations.
Environmental
The Precilience project aims at generating substantial environmental co-benefits across biodiversity improvements, carbon sequestration and ecosystem services. Forestry demonstrations promote forest health and biodiversity through mixed species stands, deadwood retention and continuous cover forestry practices that support ecological stability and soil biodiversity. The project supports carbon sequestration as both a climate mitigation function and an emerging revenue stream for forest owners. Nature-based solutions, including wetland restoration, floodplain utilisation and buffer zones, enhance water retention, reduce nutrient leaching and restore pollinator habitats. Improved water management infrastructure and soil health practices contribute to reduced erosion and enhanced resilience of forest and agricultural landscapes to extreme weather events.
Replicability
Replicating across boreal regions using standardised protocols, co-created design and flexible frameworks to enable uptake in new regions.
Best suited for
The solutions developed by Precilience are best suited for replication by forest owners and practitioners across boreal and hemiboreal regions where similar climatic conditions and forest types exist.
Stakeholders' role
Replication of Precilience’s forestry solutions requires the active engagement of a broad range of stakeholders. Forest owners, both private and public, serve as primary implementers of adaptive practices on the ground. Forest practitioners and advisory services translate research into practical guidance through field visits and training, while universities and research institutes design experiments, monitor outcomes and develop evidence-based recommendations. Policymakers and public authorities are essential for removing regulatory barriers and aligning solutions with subsidy and policy frameworks. Industry and business representatives contribute market context and support commercialisation, while the finance and insurance sector enables emerging carbon and biodiversity markets as well as risk-sharing mechanisms. Advocacy organisations and forest associations facilitate outreach and peer learning among landowners, and local communities ensure broad acceptance and accessibility of the solutions demonstrated.
Built-in scalable tools
Precilience embeds replicability into its core design through a combination of standardised methodologies and flexible adaptation mechanisms. The project utilises finalised field protocols, common analytical templates for climate impact narratives and interoperable modelling platforms to ensure consistency and comparability across regions while allowing for necessary adjustments for local site conditions. Transferable stakeholder engagement structures, such as the stakeholder steering groups, provide frameworks for collaboration that can be established in new contexts. Crucially, the demonstrations are explicitly built for replication with tools and resources designed for use beyond the project’s lifetime, ensuring that the co-created solutions remain scalable and accessible to forest owners and practitioners in other boreal regions.
Funding pathways
The Presilience project was funded through the EU Mission on Adaptation with Horizon EU grant agreement number 101157094.
