French forests as seen from the Alps

Against a backdrop of climate change and competing land-use interests, the French forest research community will gather in the Alps from June 16 to 19, 2026, for the annual seminar of the Forestt-Hub project, co-organized by the Alpine Forests in Transition Chair.

They seem timeless and beyond human influence. Yet French forests are not “natural” spaces. They are managed and developed based on human decisions and actions, and are also the site of numerous socio-ecological interactions.

For several years now, numerous research projects have focused on this unique environment, particularly in mountainous terrain.“Alpine forests, in addition to being on the front lines of climate change, are at the heart of issues related to tourism and land-use conflicts,” summarizes Raphaël Lachello, a postdoctoral researcher with the Alpine Forests in Transition Chair, affiliated with Labex ITTEM. “As a result, ecological and social disturbances in Alpine forests are being scrutinized at the national level, and the research we conduct there helps inform discussions about other forests in the region,” he continues.

Based on field surveys, the research chair focuses particularly on the role of stakeholders in the forest-wood sector within the context of mountain forest transitions. It is now part of a broad national interdisciplinary research program on forests, the PEPR Forestt, which will mobilize the entire French scientific community over six years (2024–2030) around four major challenges:

• The societal challenges of the socio-ecological transition of forests
• The development of a circular bioeconomy based on wood
• The adaptation and resilience of forest ecosystems to mitigate the effects of global change
• The use of “smart” monitoring systems to foster scientific discoveries and guide forest management and policy decisions

Among the five flagship projects of this program, the Forestt-Hub aims to integrate and facilitate dialogue between knowledge from different disciplines, while providing scientific analysis for debates and a framework for policy decisions. The Alpine Forests in Transition Chair serves as the regional representative for the Alpine region. It is in this context that it will co-organize the Forestt-Hub’s annual seminar from June 16 to 19, 2026, with the first day taking place at the Maison des sciences humaines-Alpes. The second day will be held in the field, in the forests of the Belledonne Massif, in partnership with the Grésivaudan Community of Communes, Grenoble Alpes Métropole, INRAE, and the ONF. On June 18 and 19, the Forestt-Hub coordination team—including the Chair in Alpine Forests in Transition—will travel to the Jardin du Lautaret in the Écrins Massif to review the past year and plan for the coming year.