European Tropical Forest Research Network

By Jelle Maas

The International Soil Reference and Information Centre (ISRIC) http://www.isric.org is the World Data Centre for Soils of the International Council of Sciences (ICSU); and is involved in developing the World Overview of Conservation Approaches and Technologies (WOCAT) http://www.wocat.net with the Centre for Development and Environment, University of Berne, Switzerland.

The Forest Soils homepage of the Soil Science Society of America provides access to online glossaries, forest soils related material, databases, electronic journals, tools and organisations (including universities). http://soilslab.cfr.washington.edu/S-7/

CSIRO Land and Water (Australia) has a programme on tropical forests; publications, eg technical documents on N, P and C balances can be downloaded. http://www.clw.csiro.au/research/tropical/

The department of Forest Soils of the Swedish Agricultural University in Uppsala has an English website: http://www.sml.slu.se/indexe.phtml

The International Erosion Control Association offers provides education, resource information and business opportunities for professionals in the erosion and sediment control industry at http://www.ieca.org/

The ICG, Netherlands Centre for Geo-ecological Research co-ordinates and organises research at several Universities in the Netherlands, and the Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, Belgium. Some of their research projects deal with forest - soil relationships. http://www.frw.uva.nl/icg/index.htm

The forest research office of the Royal Forest Department of Thailand http://www.forest.go.th/default_e.asp has published abstracts on their forest soils research at http://www.forest.go.th/Research/English/abstracts_silvic/Soil%20Research.htm; plantation research abstracts may be found at http://www.forest.go.th/Research/English/abstracts_silvic/Plantation.htm.

The International Soil Conservation Organization (ISCO); links to the meetings and action agenda are available at: http://topsoil.nserl.purdue.edu/iscohome/index.html

The Kerala Forest Research institute (KFRI) in India has a number of interesting activities including plantation forestry research projects, agroforestry, non wood forest products, soil science and the upcoming international teak conference (December 2003). Please see http://www.kfri.org

The Brazilian research institute EMBRAPA, http://www.embrapa.br/english/embrapa.htm presents some papers on forest soils at http://www.cpaa.embrapa.br/env52/env52aeng.htm

The Australian Cooperative Research Centre for Sustainable Production Forestry is a collaborative venture between Australian forestry companies, the Commonwealth Government, State Government enterprises and Universities. The Centre's sustainable management programme includes research projects on Site productivity; Management of tropical soils; Silvicultural systems; and Modelling production and wood quality. http://www.forestry.crc.org.au/susman.htm

The South African paper manufacturer Mondi, has large plantations in South Africa. More information at http://www.mondiforests.co.za/