360° Videos
These videos are designed to let you experience different European forests in 360 degrees. Move the image with your mouse. If you have a headset or the YouTube app on your phone, watch them in Virtual Reality.
European Forests in Virtual Reality
The following videos show what forests look like with different levels of management. Grab the screen with your mouse and turn it towards what you want to see.
We need forests for the lumber, and we also need them to capture water and to sequester carbon. Few forests can be set aside purely as wild lands; most need to be managed to meet multiple goals. We call these the working forests.
In this campaign, we traveled through Czechia and Germany to look at different types of working forests, and to explore different solutions to mitigate insect damage which is fueled by an increasing global temperatures, drought, and severe weather.
Spruce Monoculture
Welcome to a virtual reality walk through spruce monoculture in Europe. Grab the screen with your mouse and turn it towards what you want to see.
Spruce Forest in Transition
This used to be a thick spruce monoculture. It is now in a transition to a more resilient mixed, multi-aged forest with beech and fir.
Mixed Production Forest
This is an example of a working, mixed, multi-aged forest. Trees are harvested for lumber when they reach their optimal size. Their removal gives space to the upcoming generation of trees. Trees that are of poor quality are left as downed trees to support soil building and biodiversity.
gentle logging
This video was taken inside of a production forest where they’re reducing the impact to the soil by using horses. Horses may seem a bit more expensive at first, but pay off in the long run: they eliminate damage to other trees and to the forest to soil, and employ local communities.
the european original
Here we are in the mature forest in the Bavarian Forest National Park. Wild woods dominated by a mix of beech, spruce and fir used to cover much of Europe. Beech grows relatively quickly and is often an early colonizer of gaps in a forest. Having beech in the mix decreases the likelihood of a forest-wide spruce beetle outbreak.
rebirth After a Spruce Beetle outbreak
This is a walk-through in the National Park here in Bavaria with the Deputy Director of the Park. Dr. Müller explains how the ecosystem works – the natural cycle of death and rebirth lasts for centuries, and creates a patchwork of different habitats. You can see skeletons of spruce killed by the bark beetle, with thick new tree growth all around as we wander through the forest in this 360 degree short.
