• © Freie Universität Berlin / Janet Wagner

    © Freie Universität Berlin / Janet Wagner

    19.03.2026

    Living Forest Laboratories in Berlin: It's Growing!

Over 18 per cent of Berlin's land area is forest, making the city one of the greenest metropoles in Europe. But what does forest research actually look like in Brain City Berlin? To mark the International Day of Forests on 21 March 2026, we take a look at three projects that shed light on the ecological, economic and social dimensions of forests.

Living the Forest Lab

Athena Grandis and Sara Reichert, research associates at TU Berlin, lead the "Living the Forest Lab", a research initiative based at the university's Faculty of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, in the department of Communications Engineering. Unexpectedly perhaps, but precisely the point: the project shows how important transdisciplinary perspectives on forests can be. Under the name "Reallabor Wald" (Real-World Forest Lab), the initiative develops prototype solutions for forest conservation, funded by the Stiftung Innovation in der Hochschullehre.

"Our goal is to support experimental, open-ended projects. To do that, we connect open-source, maker and open-hardware communities with students, laboratories, experts and the public," says Sara Reichert. She comes from an electrical engineering background, where real-world applications are not always a given. "We wanted to try out the real-world lab approach, and that's how we got into teaching. Students can develop prototypes on forest-related topics and build a relationship with forest knowledge."

Also unusual for an electrical engineering context are graduation exhibitions, such as the one the project organised last year. In collaboration with the Stage Design and Scenographic Space degree programme, and with support from TU Berlin's central administration, the team presented TechTales. The exhibition ran from 1 November 2025 to 13 February 2026 in the "UNIVERSUM" at TU Berlin, featuring an immersive space where visitors could discuss and explore fair and sustainable future scenarios. It was a contribution to innovative science communication in Brain City Berlin.

Interdisciplinary Research

Following the exhibition, the European research project ADAPT approached the Real-World Forest Lab, as did other interested parties from a wide range of disciplines. This has led, among other things, to a collaboration with the Hochschule für Nachhaltige Entwicklung Eberswalde (University for Sustainable Development), where the team is now trialling prototypes in a real-world forest setting. "We want to give students the opportunity to approach forest-related topics and forest knowledge speculatively," says Sara Reichert, and it is precisely here that the project's interdisciplinary character comes to the fore.

The Living the Forest Lab now has around 20 prototypes in development, pointing in very different directions: from alarm systems for small forest animals that emit high-frequency sounds during a forest fire to help them avoid a dangerous retreat into their burrows, to a digital forest environment for testing prototypes, to early warning mechanisms. A number of student theses have already been completed on these topics, and the project has a well-stocked website.

The lab is now looking to expand its network and embed its work more firmly in research. "The topic of forests could be present in many research fields where you might not immediately expect it, such as electrical engineering," says Sara Reichert. "I invite researchers to place their subject in a forest context and see whether something interesting emerges." Computer science, as well as research fields shaped by biology and chemistry, are seen as particularly promising areas.

A Mini Forest at FU Berlin

The Real-World Forest Lab carries out most of its work in Brandenburg, but test forests can also be found within Berlin itself. Since 2024, for instance, Freie Universität Berlin has had its own forest: the "FU Mini-Wald", organised by Janet Wagner, Rebecca Rongstock and Lisa Marschinke. The project, which has been recognised with the "FUturist" award, is located on the Dahlem campus and consists of regional trees and shrubs designed to create more habitat for biodiversity, while also providing a green space for learning and encounter. The plants also help cool the local microclimate, mitigating the Urban Heat Island Effect, whereby urban areas experience higher air temperatures than their surroundings.

The forest is made up of around 120 woody plants from 25 species, covering approximately 100 square metres. They have grown quickly, and following the Japanese Miyawaki method for mini forests, a genuine woodland has taken shape in a short space of time. This is made possible by dense planting, in which young plants compete for sunlight, and the project also serves as a model for unsealing surfaces elsewhere in Berlin.

The mini forest in Brain City Berlin is not only beneficial for biodiversity, the urban climate and soil health: it also supports university teaching. Students can take part in the process through two course offerings at Freie Universität and learn directly on-site about mini forests in urban spaces.

The project's short film documents the planting event on 30 November 2024 and shows the growth after six months:

Watch the film here: https://box.fu-berlin.de/s/oYAgxxjgDayCxeP

The mini forest can be found at the "EXC 2020 – Temporal Communities" building, Otto-von-Simson-Str. 15, 14195 Berlin.

Research on Boreal Forests

Until July 2026, Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin is running a research project entitled "Boreal Forests and Their Protective Function for Permafrost in a Changing Climate", funded through the DFG Walter Benjamin Programme. The boreal forest biome, also known as the taiga, is a belt of coniferous forest stretching across the northern hemisphere and represents an enormous, highly valuable system with a significant influence on global climate mechanisms. The project investigates how an expansion of global forest cover could enable carbon capture and storage in biomass, and what feedback mechanisms exist in boreal forests with lower density and altered species composition.

The International Day of Forests has been observed annually on 21 March since 1971, drawing attention to the accelerating destruction of forest ecosystems. This year, the Food and Agriculture Organisation of the United Nations (FAO) has adopted the theme "Forests and Business", highlighting how forests strengthen economies, which forest products contribute to livelihoods, and why healthy forests make for healthy communities. The research coming out of Brain City Berlin on this topic underscores the central importance of forest landscapes, and with it, a call to treat them with care.

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