Restoring forests is as much a social, institutional, and economic endeavor as it is an ecological one. Across regions, landscapes, and governance contexts, restoration initiatives have generated a wealth of experience – what worked, what didn’t, and what must change to achieve lasting impact. This Lessons Learned booklet brings together insights from our 12 large-scale restoration …
SUPERB: Upscaling Forest Restoration
SUPERB (Systemic solutions for upscaling of urgent ecosystem restoration for forest-related biodiversity and ecosystem services) is a €20 million project funded by the Horizon 2020 Research and Innovation Programme under the EU Green Deal to restore thousands of hectares of forest landscape across Europe. By linking practical and scientific knowledge to be synergistically transformed into action and building a large and powerful multi-stakeholder network, SUPERB is creating transformative change towards large-scale restoration.
About the project
With 36 partners in 16 countries, led by the European Forest Institute and co-coordinated by Wageningen Environmental Research, SUPERB will carry out concrete restoration actions in 12 large-scale demonstration areas. These demos not only represent the diversity of stressors on European forests and the wide range of necessary restoration actions but also consider entire socio-ecological systems including people’s manyfold needs for ecosystem goods and services.
To implement our objectives, we will foster an enabling environment for future-oriented forest restoration by demonstrating and testing together restoration approaches with local stakeholders and increasing societal awareness and support. In the course of the project, we will create a large and powerful multi-stakeholder network and movement for the development, uptake, and upscaling of transformative forest restoration approaches and actions.
Forest Knowledge Gateway
The Forest Knowledge Gateway is a dynamic knowledge base, continuously updated with new insights, tools, and practical guidance on forest restoration, climate change adaptation, and integrative forest management, reflecting evolving knowledge and practices in restoration.
This Gateway has been thoughtfully designed for four key forest stakeholder groups — Landowners & Practitioners, Planners & Implementers, Policy Actors, and Funders & Investors. Users are guided through a high-level synthesis of the most relevant knowledge, resources, and tools to support their specific needs.
A set of online guidelines, covering areas such as monitoring, forest restoration practices, and upscaling strategies, provides more in-depth support for users seeking topic-specific guidance.
The Forest Knowledge Gateway has been developed in close collaboration with a wide range of research and practice organizations, co-designed with key stakeholders, and supported by policy actors. It was created as part of the EU Horizon 2020 project SUPERB and the Horizon Europe project TRANSFORMIT and is led by the European Forest Institute.
SUPERB & IUFRO Forest Restoration Talks
Join the debate and become a member of our #UpscalingForestRestoration community!
Every second Wednesday of the month, always at 16:00 CET.
New in SUPERB
A recently published paper An ambitious and science-based implementation of the EU Nature Restoration Regulation could help transform forestry toward greater sustainability and fewer conflicts, according to SUPERB researchers at the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences (SLU). In contrast, a minimal or restrictive approach risks prolonging uncertainty, controversy, and polarization in the forestry debate. In …
FORWARDS via the European Forest Institute (EFI) has launched a new call for proposals, G-07-2025, inviting applications to establish Climate-Smart Forestry (CSF) and forest restoration pilot projects across Europe, with a strong focus on citizen and stakeholder engagement. The call aims to generate practical, region-specific evidence on how CSF and restoration approaches influence forest functioning …
Our newly released policy brief brings together scientific knowledge and hands-on experience from our 12 large-scale forest restoration initiatives across Europe, offering timely and practical guidance for policymakers, forest managers, and other key stakeholders. The brief underlines that restoring forests is not a single action, but a long-term, multi-phase process. Effective restoration typically moves from …
Article written by Louisa Bouri-Saouter and Gesche Schifferdecker When tourists come to visit Germany’s most populous state, North Rhine-Westphalia, some wonder what has happened. Around the Lömecke Tower, an observation tower about 35 meters high in the Arnsberg Forest Nature Park, the once endless spruce forests are gone. Since 2018, about 133,000 hectares of spruce forest have been damaged by …
On 4 November, SUPERB collaborated with the European Forest Institute’s ThinkForest webinar for an in-depth look at nature restoration with a focus on forests, asking what support the latest science can offer. Elisabeth Schatzdorfer, Principal Scientist at EFI presented some of the lessons learned from SUPERB, building on its multidisciplinary scientific and practical findings, including …
Demo Areas
Click on the blue dots to explore our demo areas and meet our local project partners!
Scotland
Italy
Netherlands
Czech Republic
Germany
Sweden
Croatia
Romania
Denmark
Spain
France
Serbia
Denmark
Partners
