Unfortunately not that many were able to attend the meeting in Lisbon. Thus, it is urgent that we meet this year to pursue the tasks of the Action. In order to allow for the maximum number of participants we will gather WGs and MC in Brussels, 6-7 October 2010.

Please, reserve the dates. Further information on deadlines for registration, hotel reservations etc. will soon be distributed to WG and MC members of FORSYS.

Short Term Scientific Missions (STSMs) allow scientists to learn from an institution or laboratory in another COST country about innovative concepts and methodologies. The STSM should be of particular interest to young scientists. The Applicant should normally be a post graduate student, a postdoctoral fellow or be employed in an institution of a COST country having accepted the MoU. For more information, see the FORSYS homepage on STSMs, where you also will find reports from completed STSMs.

/Ola Eriksson (FORSYS chair)

The DSFM2010 workshop in Lisbon 19-20 April was successfully completed – successful given the odd circumstances surrounding the meeting. Due to the eruptions only about 15 were able to make it to Lisbon. Fortunately, among those attending was key note speaker Keith Reynolds who could deliver a much appreciated presentation on success factors for DSS related to the EMDS system. Despite, or perhaps thanks to, the few participants there were intensive discussions revealing interesting perceptions of forest DSS.

Our great thanks to Andre Falcao who has bore a heavy burden as organizer of the workshop who made a great event of the meeting in the middle of chaos. And the preparations made by Andre and others should not be in vain; we expect to make material in the form of presentations and posters available through the FORSYS homepage. And the review and publication of articles in cooperation with Mathematical and Computational Forestry & Natural-Resource Sciences (MCFNS) will continue according to plans. Keep updated with your FORSYS blog subscription.

/Ola Eriksson, Action chair

In view of the approaching Lisbon meeting19-21 April it could be a good idea to refresh what went on at the Riga meeting in November 2009. The excellent presentations by Pedro Sousa (Enterprice Architecture), Mikael Rönnqvist (FlowOpt) and Marc Hanewinkel (MOTIVE)are now available on the FORSYS homepage under Presentations: http://fp0804.emu.ee/?id=meetmate.

FORSYS aims at producing decision support guidelines for forest management planning problems, where a forest management planning problem involves …

►    the definition of the timing and location of forest management options in a unit of forestland over a planning horizon,

►    in order to approximate or optimize management objectives,

►    that are single or multiple and relate to goods and services that are traded or non-traded, and

►    subject to resource constraints.

Thus the output of a decision support tool as understood in FORSYS ideally includes …

►    an efficient set of actions,

►    tradeoffs between management goals, and

►    impacts of changing uncertain parameters.