Activities and events

Unit 6.03.02

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For more details about terms in italics please read our FAQs at http://www.wsl.ch/forest/risks/iufro/FAQ.ehtml.

Our activities are organized around three complementary approaches:

To this day, 240 experts in forest-related fields have joined our Directory of Experts worldwide. Altogether they represent 42 languages and 395 fields of expertise (see details at http://www.wsl.ch/forest/risks/iufro/directory_update.ehtml). They all have agreed to provide free and fast terminological assistance (see http://www.wsl.ch/forest/risks/iufro/FAQ.ehtml#faqhotline) in their fields of expertise. The searchable Directory is available via the Web, but the questions and answers are exchanged on a person-to-person basis. Please feel free to use this Directory, http://www.wsl.ch/forest/risks/iufro/.

We will also gladly welcome you as a new member of our Directory of Experts. We need experts in all languages and all forest-related disciplines!

With this new activity we intend to increase terminological awareness among IUFRO members. Before each IUFRO workshop, meeting, or conference (see Calendar of Meetings), we submit to the organizers some terms and/or definitions related to the topic of their meeting, and which we think would benefit from clarification by the experts attending the meeting. Of course, if appropriate, the participants can discuss additional terms, but with a maximum of 10. The discussion may focus e.g. on identifying recommended vs. non recommended terms, on defining a few terms key to a specific field, or on pointing out differences in definitions between languages. The resulting information is entered in the SilvaTerm database, with a mention of the contributing IUFRO Unit. This activity is coordinated by Prof. John Helms.

Conferences on specific issues or concepts needing clarification or standardization of definitions and usage are operated via the Internet as moderated mailing lists. Their lifespan is determined by the moderator but should remain short (less than 6 months).

Our role as members of a broadly-based, international organization is to make people aware of terminological differences rather than to hide them, and, whenever relevant, also to point out conceptual convergences behind terminological differences. The conferences are therefore based on descriptive rather than prescriptive principles, i.e. they do not primarily aim at recommending definitions, but rather at pointing out geographical and cultural differences in term uses.

So far the following concepts have been explored:

1. old-growth forests, natural forests, primary forests, virgin forests and related terms (Jan. 20 to June 27, 1997).
2. reforestation, afforestation and deforestation (May 26 to Dec. 20, 1998).
3. low forest cover (Nov. 4-27, 1998).
4. forest health (first semester 2000).

If you wish to suggest future discussion topics, please contact Michèle Kaennel Dobbertin, kaennel(at)wsl.ch.