Micro-gardens re-think the concept of provenance trials for the future needs of forestry in Europe. Micro-gardnens are small, 100 m2 each, but hundreds of them are distributed across Europe. Micro-gardnens are established from seeds using direct seeding directly into the forest soil, thus inform about natural regeneration. Micro-gardens are participatory and inclusive, each of them is managed by a local forester who is thereby actively contributing to the establishment of future forest management strategies.
Multi-lingual website and protocols: Website, inscription questionnaire, and observation protocols are already available in 13 European languages thanks to the project’s dedicated team of local coordinators.
Novel infrastructure for micro-gardens: Seeds are protected with purpose-designed and produced steel fences “seed protectors” to avoid seed predation and to protect the forests from contamination with foreign seeds.
Data collection with a smartphone: Powered by ODK Collect, data collection is standardized and effortless, and allow for submitting the data to centralized server.
Adaptation to climate change
Soil health and foodAddressing target audiences and expressing needs
- Grants and Subsidies
- Help in technical expertise
- Collaboration
Collaboration with national forest services and forest owners all across Europe.
Fuding to increase the scale of the project (species, countries, participants).
AI solutions to facilitate image based data validation.
- Public or private funding institutions
- Research and Technology Organisations
- Private Investors
R&D, Technology and Innovation aspects
This result is a proof-of-concept.
We seek fuding/investors to apply our methodology in other forest tree species, in other countries, and with other participants working in the forest sector.
We seek private investors to develop AI solutions to facilitate image based data validation. Such a tool could be commercialized within the forestry and academic sector as a licenced mobile App. Annotated images are available.
