FORSAID launches its official podcast - ForestHealth

With its two-year mark on the horizon, FORSAID has now entered a new medium for stakeholder engagement with its very own podcast. Titled ForestHealth, it is meant to be a platform for discussion among experts on the threat that pests and pathogens pose to European forests and how it might be addressed. As such, the podcast provides a new medium for the dissemination of the project’s research and results.

The launch came with the arrival of the first episode, a conversation between two colleagues from the University of Padua that operate at the epicentre of FORSAID’s activities. One was Andree Cappellari, the project’s manager and the newly designated host of ForestHealth. Her guest was FORSAID’s coordinator, Andrea Battisti, a forestry specialist who has been active in the field of entomology for more than three decades.

At the heart of this first edition was an introduction to pests and pathogens as biotic stressors in forests that can have a detrimental impact on these vital ecosystems. In this context, Andree and Andrea talked about the challenges in navigating among the wide variety of species when attempting to single out those that pose a threat to tree populations. This was linked to the selection of target species informing FORSAID’s own work and the improved standard for early detection and monitoring technologies that the project is pursuing.

The full episode can be listened to below. You can look out for future editions of the ForestHealth podcast on Spotify, SoundCloud and YouTube.