Forests are indispensable for climate protection, biodiversity, and numerous ecosystem services. However, the climate crisis is altering their structure and function with unprecedented dynamics. To adapt forests to long-term climate and ecosystem change, scientifically sound, practice-oriented, and socially accepted solutions are required.

The SURVEY project develops and tests a supra-regional forest living lab as an infrastructure for interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary transformation research. Within a network of experimental sites in the Harz Mountains and Lower Bavaria, different management strategies for dealing with damaged and highly vulnerable spruce forests are being investigated. Digital twins, modelling approaches, and synthesis platforms enable the integration of regional findings and the analysis of future scenarios. Key stakeholders are actively involved through processes of co-creation, co-production, and co-evaluation.

In the subproject conducted at the Technical University of Munich, the focus lies on the evaluation of selected ecosystem services and the development of an integrated assessment framework. Different forest management strategies are examined within the field of tension between timber provision, the (bio-)economy, climate protection, biodiversity, and societal demands.

A central component is the systematic quantification and visualization of trade-offs using Pareto front analyses, to create robust and transparent decision-making foundations for the forest of the future.