Host Award Winners Announced

The IUFRO WORLD CONGRESS HOST AWARD honours three outstanding scientists from the host countries who have elevated the profile of forest science and research. One of the awardees is from Sweden, one from the other Nordic countries, and one from the Baltic countries.

The awardees are Liisa Tyrväinen, Jan Stenlid and Algirdas Augustaitis.

Liisa Tyrväinen

Professor researching nature-based tourism and recreation at Natural Resources Institute Finland since 2015, is a globally leading and one of the most widely cited social science scholars in the field of forestry – and possibly the leading scholar when it comes to the amenity values of forests/forest-based recreation.

Liisa Tyrväinen’s research has been widely applied in forest policy, forest planning in private and public forests, and in promoting the health effects of forest-based recreation. Her multidisciplinary contributions to scientific leadership and co-designing of sustainable businesses and policies encompass multiple themes. These include urban forestry, health benefits of forest recreation, socio-economic values of forests and compensation mechanisms for ecosystem services in the field of nature-based tourism.

Numerous positions of trust in the academic community and elsewhere in society make Liisa Tyrväinen one of the most visible, societally impactful forest scientists in Finland, one whose excellence has gained wide recognition.

Algirdas Augustaitis

Professor and Chief Scientist at Vytautas Magnus University, Lithuania since 2007, has studied the integrated effects of climate, ambient ozone, atmospheric nitrogen and sulphur deposition following outbreaks of forest pests on the sustainability of forest ecosystems.

He has examined the growth patterns of prevailing tree species in hemiboreal forests under the locally elevated and currently reduced regional pollution load and meteorological extremes. His studies also included the spatial pattern of climate change and the environmental pollution effects on tree crown conditions.
Coordination and implementation of the ICP IM Programme in Lithuania (since 1993) built up the background knowledge that enabled Algirdas Augustaitis to develop recommendations of close-to-nature forestry measures for adapting forest ecosystems to cope with air pollution and climate change, enhancing their capacity to mitigate new threats to forest ecosystems.

Jan Stenlid

Professor of Forest Pathology at the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences from 1995 to 2022, is one of the most influential Swedish researchers in the field of forest pathology and biology in general, with a major international impact. He has succeeded in combining basic research to understand the biology of forest pathogenic fungi with applied research that has been put to practical use in forestry.

Over nearly four decades, his research has made significant contributions to many scientific fields, including forest pathology, ecology, conservation biology, mycology, genetics, fungal genomics, disease resistance breeding and forest management. Over the course of his career, Jan Stenlid has published numerous articles in international journals, built a large, successful research group, and supervised doctoral students, postdocs, and visiting researchers.