Between 1995 and 2008 the granting of the Binding Forest Award led to fresh cooperation between forest owners and research on silviculture, growth and yield at the Swiss Federal Institute for Forest, Snow and Landscape Research. Various topics were treated: a study of the beech coppices in Rothenfluh rapidly made it clear that very little was known about this formerly widespread type of forest management and its consequences. The same was true to a lesser extent for the conversion of rather uniform high forest into selection forest (in Plasselb), and for the selective management of light demanding tree species, such as the oak, in Rheinau. In Boudry, cooperation between practice and research already existed: the prize award here led to new approaches in the production of high quality oak, whilst taking ecological values into account. All these new projects are still in their earliest stages and will call for a great deal of “sustainability”, in both senses of the word, from all those involved. Considering the long periods of time required for the development of forest ecosystems, this is in fact self-evident.
Research Life in Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Zurich