Recent increase in European forest harvests as based on area estimates (Ceccherini et al. 2020a) not confirmed in the French case

Picard, Nicolas; Leban, Jean-Michel; Guehl, Jean‐Marc; Dreyer, Erwin; Bouriaud, Olivier; Bontemps, Jean‐Daniel; Landmann, Guy; Colin, Antoine; Peyron, Jean-Luc; Marty, Pascal

doi:10.1007/s13595-021-01030-x

Cited by 17 publications

(14 citation statements)

References 9 publications

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“…Current forest dynamic is here shown to comply with both felling intensification and in situ forest C sequestration persistence strategies ( Fig 3 ), suggesting that the issue has a somewhat ideologic dimension. Continued increasing GS also implies greater wood availability at constant felling rates [ 91 ]. Yet, an inverse U-shaped future GS response to economic development may not be excluded.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Inflation of wood resources in European forests: The footprints of a big-bang

Bontemps

2021

PLoS ONE

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The current increase in European forest resources forms a singularity across the globe. Whether this trend will persist, and how biological and economic trends feature it form crucial issues to green economy challenges and C sequestration. The present screening of Forest Europe 2015 statistics explored the features, inertia and limits of this expansion, and its relationships with countries’ development, forest management and trade, intense in this area of the world. Persisting footprint of past demographic pressure on forests was identified, with opposed traces on their area and growing stock density. Steady growing stock (GS) increases, proportional to GS, not density-limited, and sustained by forest area increases, supported the view of an inflationary forest dynamic. Economic development and liberalism fostered both forest exploitation and production, yielding no significant impact on GS changes. Wood exports exerted a tension on forest exploitation and GS changes, thus lowering GS inflation but providing a resource security margin in the face of expected climate threats. Conflicting a common view, GS inflation and moderate felling-to-increment ratios make increased use of wood resources and C sequestration reconcilable, and GS expansion timely for ongoing EU forest policy processes. Anticipated adverse impacts of ongoing climate change were not clearly identified in these statistics.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Inflation of wood resources in European forests: The footprints of a big-bang

Bontemps

2021

PLoS ONE

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“…An improvement of NFIs should also aim at a more holistic knowledge of forests, as forest data is used for other purposes than wood resources, including climate, energy and biodiversity in the context of current policy settings. The use of remote sensing techniques, if duly combined with ground plots, will increasingly complement country statistics in providing timely spatial and temporal patterns on forest management [ 40 , 41 ]. Additional efforts can be oriented to improving the robustness of national forest statistics and implicitly their reporting within the EU frameworks (e.g.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Setting the forest reference levels in the European Union: overview and challenges

Vizzarri

Pilli

Korosuo

et al. 2021

Carbon Balance Manage

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Background The contribution of EU forests to climate change mitigation in 2021–2025 is assessed through the Forest Reference Levels (FRLs). The FRL is a projected country-level benchmark of net greenhouse gas emissions against which the future net emissions will be compared. The FRL models the hypothetical development of EU forest carbon sink if the historical management practices were continued, taking into account age dynamics. The Member States’ FRLs have been recently adopted by the European Commission with the delegated Regulation (EU) 2021/268 amending the Regulation (EU) 2018/841. Considering the complexity of interactions between forest growth, management and carbon fluxes, there is a need to understand uncertainties linked to the FRL determination. Results We assessed the methodologies behind the modelled FRLs and evaluated the foreseen impact of continuation of management practices and age dynamics on the near-future EU27 + UK forest carbon sink. Most of the countries implemented robust modelling approaches for simulating management practices and age dynamics within the FRL framework, but faced several challenges in ensuring consistency with historical estimates. We discuss that the projected 16% increase in harvest in 2021–2025 compared to 2000–2009, mostly attributed to age dynamics, is associated to a decline of 18% of forest sink (26% for living biomass only). Conclusions We conclude that the FRL exercise was challenging but improved the modelling capacity and data availability at country scale. The present study contributes to increase the transparency of the implementation of forest-related EU policies and provides evidence-based support to future policy development.

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“…Altogether, this can explain why tree canopy loss figures with finer grain resolution are higher than the results from the monitoring of clear-felled areas. This discrepancy has resulted in rebuttals (e.g., [87][88][89][90]) to a European-wide analysis of tree canopy loss [91]. As it turned out, seemingly abrupt increases in tree canopy loss could be attributed to a transition to more sensitive sensors used for remote sensing [87,89].…”

Section: Data Sources To Be Used With Carementioning

confidence: 99%

“…This discrepancy has resulted in rebuttals (e.g., [87][88][89][90]) to a European-wide analysis of tree canopy loss [91]. As it turned out, seemingly abrupt increases in tree canopy loss could be attributed to a transition to more sensitive sensors used for remote sensing [87,89]. We, therefore, argue for in-depth studies to address what different spatial data can tell regarding both spatial and temporal comparisons of both anthropogenic and natural disturbances that take place at different spatial scales [84].…”

Section: Data Sources To Be Used With Carementioning

confidence: 99%

Effects of Forestry Intensification and Conservation on Green Infrastructures: A Spatio-Temporal Evaluation in Sweden

Angelstam

Manton

2021

Land

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There is a rivalry between policies on intensification of forest management to meet the demands of a growing bioeconomy, and policies on green infrastructure functionality. Evaluation of the net effects of different policy instruments on real-world outcomes is crucial. First, we present data on final felling rates in wood production landscapes and stand age distribution dynamic in two case study regions, and changes in dead wood amounts in Sweden. Second, the growth of formally protected areas was compiled and changes in functional connectivity analysed in these regions, and the development of dead wood and green tree retention in Sweden was described. The case studies were the counties Dalarna and Jämtland (77,000 km2) representing an expanding frontier of boreal forest transformation. In the wood production landscape, official final felling rates averaged 0.84 %/year, extending the regional timber frontier. The amount of forest <60 years old increased from 27–34% in 1955 to 60–65% in 2017. The amounts of dead wood, a key forest naturalness indicator, declined from 1994 to 2016 in north Sweden, and increased in the south, albeit both at levels far below evidence-based biodiversity targets. Formal forest protection grew rapidly in the two counties from 1968 to 2020 but reached only 4% of productive forests. From 2000 to 2019, habitat network functionality for old Scots pine declined by 15–41%, and Norway spruce by 15–88%. There were mixed trends for dead wood and tree retention at the stand scale. The net result of the continued transformation of near-natural forest remnants and conservation efforts was negative at the regional and landscape levels, but partly positive at the stand scale. However, at all three scales, habitat amounts were far below critical thresholds for the maintenance of viable populations of species, let alone ecological integrity. Collaboration among stakeholder categories should reject opinionated narratives, and instead rely on evidence-based knowledge about green infrastructure pressures, responses, and states.

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Recent increase in European forest harvests as based on area estimates (Ceccherini et al. 2020a) not confirmed in the French case

Cited by 17 publications

References 9 publications

Inflation of wood resources in European forests: The footprints of a big-bang

Inflation of wood resources in European forests: The footprints of a big-bang

Setting the forest reference levels in the European Union: overview and challenges

Effects of Forestry Intensification and Conservation on Green Infrastructures: A Spatio-Temporal Evaluation in Sweden

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