The Inaugural GFBI Conference took place in Beijing, September 6-9, 2017. The conference was attended by over 70 participants from 33 countries. Staff members from Beijing Forestry University, together with more than 40 student volunteers provided valuable service to ensure the success of the conference.

GFBI webpage

Forests are critical in the fight against biodiversity loss and climate change. But successful policy to govern these valuable resources necessitates a fundamental understanding of forests at a global scale. Until now, the required large-scale understanding of forest ecosystems has been based on remote sensing data. We can now supplement this information with massive ground-sourced inventory data at a global scale, which will greatly enhance our understanding of forest dynamics in a global context.

The GFBI is a global research network focused on the use of big data to enhance our fundamental understanding of the global forest system.

The Conference features:

a) Opportunities to develop research collaboration with current and prospective GFBI members from around the world;

b) Development of GFBI legislation and data-sharing protocols;

c) Plenary and Concurrent sessions of top-tier research presentations (we accept papers/presentations from any discipline that can provide interesting contributions about the structure and dynamics of forest ecosystems, and their services to people);

d) Guest speakers from UN FAO, Nature editorial board, and research institutes, etc.

Elena Tikhonova (Ph.D., senior researcher) took part in the conference with report:

Elena Tikhonova, Nikolay Shevchenko, Gleb Tikhonov, Svetlana Knyazeva, Alexandra Plotnikova, Natalia Lukina, Svetlana Eydlina, Maxim Shashkov Tree diversity patterns along the latitudinal gradient in the Northwestern Russia