BackgroundEuropean forests have a long record of management. However, the diversity of the current forest management across nations, tree species and owners, is hardly understood. Often when trying to simulate future forest resources under alternative futures, simply the yield table style of harvesting is applied. It is now crucially important to come to grips with actual forest management, now that demand for wood is increasing and the EU Land Use, Land Use Change and Forestry Regulation has been adopted requiring ‘continuation of current management practices’ as a baseline to set the Forest Reference Level carbon sink.MethodsBased on a large dataset of 714,000 re-measured trees in National Forest inventories from 13 regions, we are now able to analyse actual forest harvesting.ConclusionsFrom this large set of repeated tree measurements we can conclude that there is no such thing as yield table harvesting in Europe. We found general trends of increasing harvest probability with higher productivity of the region and the species, but with important deviations related to local conditions like site accessibility, state of the forest resource (like age), specific subsidies, importance of other forest services, and ownership of the forest. As a result, we find a huge diversity in harvest regimes. Over the time period covered in our inventories, the average harvest probability over all regions was 2.4% yr-1 (in number of trees) and the mortality probability was 0.4% yr-1. Our study provides underlying and most actual data that can serve as a basis for quantifying ‘continuation of current forest management’. It can be used as a cornerstone for the base period as required for the Forest Reference Level for EU Member States.
Abstract& Key message The potential of European National Forest Inventories to harmonise stem quality estimation in European forests was identified despite considerable differences in existing national approaches. & Context Knowledge on stem quality and assortments structure in European forests is highly important for policy makers and the timber industry and also for carbon life cycle analysis due to the fact that different timber products have different end use and thus store carbon for different time periods.& Aims The study aim was to evaluate the potential of European National Forest Inventories (NFI) to objectively report on the stem quality in European forests in a harmonised manner. & Methods A comprehensive questionnaire was conducted as the first important step to evaluate the current status of stem quality assessment and assess the existing level of harmonisation. & Results Direct stem quality assessment or classification is used in 19 out of 28 European NFIs. Only eight countries provide timber assortment estimates from their NFIs. In addition, different sampling strategies for stem quality assessment are used among NFIs. Tree parameters relevant for stem quality assessment on standing trees were identified for the purpose of harmonisation. Several methods towards harmonisation between European NFIs for the purpose of reporting on stem quality of European forests were suggested. & Conclusion Current European NFIs are not capable of reporting the stem quality of European forests in a harmonised manner at this stage and considerable efforts will need to be taken before the harmonised stem quality estimation can be
Handling Editor: Jean-Michel LebanContribution of the co-authors MB, JR and MK designed the study, performed the questionnaire study and wrote the manuscript; GM contributed in designing the questionnaire and revised the manuscript; GM, KK, AK, GK prepared a description of the timber quality assessment in their NFIs and revised the manuscript; RA, TG, CF and AL reviewed literature and revised the manuscript. prepared. However, the inquiry also revealed that there is a potential to develop the harmonised estimations in future.
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