Thröstur Eysteinsson

Icelandic Forest Service – Iceland

Thröstur Eysteinsson spent his childhood exploring Iceland’s bountiful natural world. His grandfathers were active volunteers in the country’s forestry societies, which he later joined while working as a high school science teacher. 

As he learned more about the history of forestry in Iceland, his interest grew. He quit his job as a teacher and enrolled at the University of Maine, where he earned his master’s degree in forestry in 1990 and Ph.D. in forest resources in 1992.

“The forestry education I received at UMaine allowed me to start working in the small forest sector in Iceland, where I have been able to contribute in many ways over the years, which was my goal,” he says. “My education has also allowed me to participate in international research projects with colleagues from the other Nordic countries and on a Pan-European level, all of which has been very rewarding.”

Today, as director of the Icelandic Forest Service, he heads the agency that will see his country’s forest cover increase by as much as 8% over the next 100 years.

In the 9th century when the first settlers arrived from what is now Norway, they found a country “forested from mountain to seashore”. Agriculture, and the human need for grazing land and fuel, resulted in deforestation and with it, soil erosion, made worse by sheep overgrazing plants that struggled to survive. Now, thanks to efforts by the Icelandic Forest Service, with the help of forestry societies and forest farmers, trees are once again beginning to cover parts of Iceland, enhancing the economy and the ecology, and also bringing a bit of controversy.

Some of the afforestation results from the spread of native downy birch (Betula pubescens), which is the only native forest-forming tree species, from remnant stands fenced against grazing sheep. But much has involved non-native species, such as spruces, pines and larch: Picea abies, Picea sitchensis, Pinus sylvestris, Pinus contorta and Larix sibirica, and that’s the main cause of controversy. Many conservationists are against the use of non-native tree species for afforestation.

Native birch, however, “simply isn’t productive,” explains Þröstur Eysteinsson, Director of the Icelandic Forest Service and EUFORGEN National Coordinator in a recently published video. Afforestation, with native and introduced species, has been gathering pace since the 1950s, but as the film shows, many of the trees that were planted originally, are dying. At the time, existing knowledge favoured parent trees based on their original latitude. The climate has changed, with milder winters, which don’t suit continental provenances. The focus now for the Icelandic Forest Service is on producing seedlings locally, from carefully selected parents.

As a result of planting what he calls “genetically well-adapted material,” Eysteinsson says that “the forests are growing better than anybody ever thought”.

In places like Iceland, climate is changing so swiftly that trees are not able to adapt genetically in time, so it makes sense to select FRM from pre-adapted populations elsewhere and use breeding to improve them further. In any case, roughly one third of the three million seedlings planted each year is native downy birch, which is very useful for reclaiming eroded land and remains well-adapted to conditions, at least for now.

Article: Regreening Iceland

Publications: ResearchGate articles here

Video 1) Afforesting Iceland
Video 2) 20 Years of Larch Breeding