Free Access
Editorial
Issue
Ann. For. Sci.
Volume 62, Number 6, September-October 2005
Page 524
DOI https://doi.org/10.1051/forest:2005057
Ann. For. Sci. 62 (2005) 524
DOI: 10.1051/forest:2005057

Foreword

Second symposium "Rencontres d'Écophysiologie de l'arbre" La Rochelle (December 8-12, 2003)

Pierre Cruiziat and Erwin Dreyer


The French initiative « Réseau d'Écophysiologie de l'Arbre (REA) », that is the Network of Tree Ecophysiology, was launched by INRA during 2000, but it soon attracted attention from other research groups dealing with trees. It aims at organizing Summer Schools, scientific meetings and symposia, and at promoting training of young researchers.

Tree ecophysiology, functional ecology of forest stands and of orchards, have proven to bear potential for many important advances in our understanding of forest ecosystems, of fruit production, and more recently of the conditions for the development of tree planting and maintenance in urban areas and at facilitating the construction of relevant cooperative research programs. REA in particular aims at bridging all these different uses of trees and these different end-user groups, and constructing relevant research programs.

The papers presented in this issue of "Annals of Forest Science" have been produced after the second symposium "Rencontres d'Écophysiologie de l'Arbre" hold in La Rochelle during late 2003. They present a small fraction of the scientific information that was made available during this meeting.

The network will further develop its activity in order to foster research and training in as diverse fields as functional ecology of trees, forests and orchards, tree physiology, and the interfaces with many different disciplines like population genetics and genomics. We do hope to produce more issues of scientific journals presenting the scientific results obtained in the network during next future.



© INRA, EDP Sciences 2005
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