Stem quality assessment in European National Forest Inventories: an opportunity for harmonised reporting?

Abstract

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. Electronic supplementary material

Comparison of Wood Resource Assessment in National Forest Inventories

“…The potential of the European NFIs for harmonised reporting of stem quality and assortment structure of the European forests, including national definitions, was comprehensively described in a recent study by Bosela et al (2015). This study was supported and is the main result of the COST Action Usewood.…”

Harmonisation of Data and Information on the Potential Supply of Wood Resources

“…Stem quality and assortment structure are among the rarest tree attributes assessed or quantified in European NFIs (Bosela et al 2015). This fact thus limits the potential for the quantification of assortment structure of European forests using NFIs at present.…”

“…This is because the current NFIs are not limited by already existing national definitions and are thus able to adopt a common reference definition. However, there are still some tree attributes already used by NFIs that are important in stem quality and assortment assessment (Bosela et al 2015) and their definition varies greatly among the NFIs (Vidal et al 2008;Gschwantner et al 2009;McRoberts et al 2009McRoberts et al , 2010Ståhl et al 2012;Tomppo and Schadauer 2012;Tomter et al 2012).…”

“…As mentioned by Bosela et al (2015), there is a different and not comprehensively harmonised terminology of "wood quality", "wood properties" and "stem quality" (MacDonald and Hubert 2002;Nuutinen et al 2009;van Leeuwen et al 2011;Rais et al 2014;Schneider et al 2008).…”

Editorial: “Forest Inventories at the European level”

“…Two contributions also focus on uncertainty in the estimates of present (McRoberts and Westfall 2015) and future (Fortin et al 2016) forest resource attributes, pointing out to a growing need for precision in the assessment of these resources. As original efforts to date, Barreiro et al (2016) and Bosela et al (2016) further offers comprehensive reviews across European countries of (1) existing models for wood resource projection and (2) approaches to stem quality assortments and directions for their harmonization.…”