| Summary: | The European Forest Ecosystem Research Network (EFERN) was set up in 1996 as one result of the Ministerial Conferences on the Protection of European Forests in Strasbourg 1990 and Helsinki 1993. EFERN is a pan-European network initiative with the aim to promote coordination of forest ecosystem research for sustainable forest management and to improve communication among scientists working in that field. The EFERN-team has issued a catalogue (CATRES) of research topics which are recommended for future investigation. An important perspective is to encourage and organize interdisciplinary research programs and transnational cooperation. Another major achievement of EFERN is a European network for forest ecology. The network consists of institutions and a working team of representatives from most European countries being active to advance the objectives of Resolution S6. The technical core of the network is the database on the Internet providing information on 1,500 institutions from 38 European countries, projects, and scientific experts dealing with forest ecosystem research. The forest institutions directory on the database, the most complete in Europe, serves as a base for a constant entry of new research projects and experts. In the EFERN project database only meta-information, needed to identify projects (title and keywords) and project participants (research units and experts), is stored. If available, links point to the Internet homepages of the research units where full project information can be found. Data entry and update is done by users via www-online forms and by the database administration. If you are involved in a research project dealing with any aspect of forest ecosystems in Europe, you are welcome to submit your data at [http://ifff.boku.ac.at/efern/dataentry.html]. The Concerted Action EFERN S6 was funded by the European Commission (FAIR) and officially ended by March 31, 1999. At present, the EFERN database is sponsored by the Austrian Federal Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry and maintained by the Institute of Forest Entomology, Forest Pathology & Forest Protection, BOKU -- University of Natural; Resources and Applied Life Sciences, Vienna, Austria. A follow-up to EFERN -- The European Network for long-term Forest Ecosystem and Landscape Research (ENFORS) -- was initiated in December 2000. ENFORS is hosted by the European Co-operation in the field of Scientific and Technical Research (COST), an intergovernmental organization of 32 European nations for cooperation in science and technology connected to the European Union (EU). (NOTE: There is a separate metadata report for ENFORS registered in Mercury.)
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