The strategic objective of the consortium is to develop a physiological forest-wood chain model (SimForTree) which is able to compare and evaluate different sustainable forest management strategies with respect to their impact on wood quality, ecosystem functioning and forest structual development (which is of importance in maintaining ecosystem diversity). The work of the consortium will be developed along three main lines: (i) an observational line that investigates the tree and forest variability under different sites and management regimes; (ii) a model development line that integrates/links both existing knowledge and the new information from the experimental work into a validated and operational model with different front-ends; and (iii) a simulation line that applies the capacities and power of the model as a decision-support system for different end-users.