ACICORK OBJECTIVES

The main objective of the ACICORK project is to design a climate-smart forestry tailored to the cork value chain by developing and improving innovative tools for the forest management of cork oak forests using geospatial techniques, for fulfilling the following specific objectives:

  1. Quantification of carbon stored in cork oak forests under different production systems, that could be used as a reference baseline to assess the change in carbon stocks.
  2. Characterization of the cork produced by the same tree in different moments with the final objective of an early evaluation of cork quality
  3. Development of a tool for monitoring the silvicultural and health status of cork oak forests combining different data sources
  4. Feasibility study of non-destructive techniques for estimating the productive capacity of standing trees
  5. Development of early diagnosis tools for the Oak decline disease using molecular markers to reduce the diagnostic time
  6. Epidemic modelling for Phytophthora cinnamomi in cork oak forests for gaining insight into the mechanisms by which oak decline initiates and spreads to predict the future course of the disease and to evaluate strategies to control this epidemic.
  7. Analysis of Spanish cork oak production systems from a climate-smart perspective by performing simulations of cork oak forests development under different scenarios and by designing a geospatial visualization tool to enable access to information about Spanish cork oak forests.

These objectives will be carried out through a multi and interdisciplinary approach that requires the participation of different research groups working in a coordinated manner through 3 subprojects:

  • PID2022-141973OR-C31 led by the Institute of Forest Sciences (ICIFOR) attached to the INIA National Center of the CSIC
  • PID2022-141973OR-C32 led by the Polytechnic University of Madrid (UPM)
  • PID2022-141973OR-C33 led by the Cork, Wood and Charcoal Institute (ICMC) belonging to the Scientific and Technological Research Center of Extremadura (CICYTEX)
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