On the 22nd of February 2021, the first meeting of the Spanish partners in the Integrate Network was held. It was a great success in terms of participation, with the attendance of 16 people from different organizations such as the national and regional public administration, private companies, universities and research centres. As a first get-together, the main goal of this meeting was to share experiences and insights about what has meant to be a part of the network so far, from the establishment of the marteloscopes to the use of them through the past years. In this sense, the region of Castilla y León has been a pioneer, with the installation of six forestry study sites in 2009 that later on became marteloscopes. All data from these sites can be found here.

Also, we discussed details about four new marteloscopes soon to be fully incorporated into the network (respectively located in the provinces of Segovia, Cáceres, Cuenca and Asturias), as well as other sites with ongoing studies related to integrated forest management (in the regions of Cataluña, Madrid and Andalucía) that may play a role in the network in the future.

The exchange has continued after this meeting, which has been a keystone in the consolidation of the network in Spain and will help us face potential upcoming challenges such as ensuring the use of the marteloscopes also during these pandemic times. For this purpose, an extra effort in terms of publicity may be needed to gain enough visibility to get to anyone interested, and make them realize the use of the marteloscopes is attractive for our targeted audiences despite the odds.