"The overall objective of RESTORE is to synthesize the knowledge of the biodiversity of pristine European boreal forests, available only in Russia, and bring it in use in European context. That will be done by combing the Russian knowledge and data from pristine boreal forests to that from managed boreal forests in Finland in order to estimate boreal forest ecosystem resilience and stability and develop tools for sustainable forest management (SFM) and restoration. The results are of crucial importance for EU and national policy makers, state forest managers, forest owners, conservationists and NGOs in both Europe and Russia. RESTORE covers 3 types of activities: research, development and dissemination. RESTORE first time estimates stability and resilience using biodiversity indicators for species groups, structures and processes of key importance for biodiversity. Natural disturbances (fires and windthrows) and felling treatments are considered as perturbations. Originality and innovative nature of the project is in its unique dataset, a gradient from pristine to intensively managed forests, and system approach in practical implementation of basic research. The management and conservation tools will be developed according to resilience, return interval after disturbance and stability threshold of each ecosystem type depending on socio-economic context, management history, site conditions and natural disturbance regimes. The data collected and analyzed in RESTORE will be published at the European Forest Data Centre of the European Commission, managed by JRC in cooperation with Metla's web team to define future guidelines for SFM. RESTORE is also in accordance with FAO's concept of SFM. In future RESTORE will be a part of a planned broad scale EU network for identifying the thresholds in ecosystem resilience and stability in a gradient of land-use intensity."