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Afforestation objectives vary from one country to another and even within countries. Apart from the objectives, the specific conditions from a biophysical, environmental and socio-economic point of view should always be considered throughout the entire afforestation process, from policy decisions through location of the new forest, establishment and management, and the final utilisation of the forest. Decisions on how and where to afforest, and how much these decisions will affect the environmental impacts should ultimately be a compromise between the site quality in terms of climate, soil and preceding land-use, the initial goals set by planners and managers, and the stakeholders’ preferences. The focus of AFFOREST has been on building knowledge and capacity to support decisions regarding afforestation of former arable land with respect to changes in C and N pools and fluxes and changes in water recharge. The guidelines in this chapter are based on literature reviews, the experimental data from chronosequences of afforested stands in Denmark, Sweden, and the Netherlands (described in Chapter 2, 3 and 4), and on the developed mechanistic metamodel (METAFORE) and the spatial Decision Support System (AFFOREST-sDSS) (Chapter 7, 8, 9 and 10). The structure of the guidelines is based on questions and corresponding answers under the main themes of water recharge, nitrate leaching, C sequestration, diversity of understory vegetation and complex questions involving more than one of the first three issues. Hopefully, the guidelines will be helpful and inspire landscape and forest planners in planning how and where afforestation should take place.

AFFOREST was a research project in the EU 5 Framework Programme for Research & Technological Development (Energy, Environment and Sustainable Development theme). The project ran for four years during the period 2000-2004 and included partners from four countries: Belgium, the Netherlands, Sweden and Denmark. Knowledge has been obtained from literature and existing data sets, completed with field observations in afforestation chronosequences on former agricultural soils. Two oak () and four Norway spruce () chronosequences were investigated. The main products are a geographical database, a mechanistic carbon/nitrogen/water process-based metamodel, a GIS-model based on the metamodel and the spatial information, and finally a spatial decision support system (AFFOREST-sDSS) for scenario analyses and decision support. The AFFOREST-sDSS is able to test and compare different scenarios of afforestation and to propose optimal solutions for afforestation planning. On the basis of these scenario analyses and the performed field work, guidelines for optimal afforestation management were developed.