Mapping forest management regimes in Europe

Forests provide a multitude of ecosystem services, such as wood provisioning, carbon sequestration, biodiversity conservation, and cultural value. Numerous European Union (EU) policies introduce diverse goals for forests, leading to inherent trade-offs when balancing different forest functions and targets. Effective planning is crucial for optimizing such trade-offs across Europe. This requires an understanding of the current spatial distribution of forest management regimes. However, the mapping of European forest management regimes is challenging due to the limited availability of comprehensive, harmonized data. This study aimed to produce a high-resolution forest management map for Europe by integrating the most recent spatial forest datasets from multiple sources available in the literature. Our integrated map depicts the spatial distribution of five forest management classes with different objectives, highlighting distinct regional patterns across the continent. Western Europe predominantly features close-to-nature forestry and combined objective forestry, whereas Northern Europe is characterized primarily by intensive forestry. Southern and Eastern Europe exhibit a more varied distribution, with combined objective forestry emerging as the most prevalent forest management class. Unmanaged forests are mostly found in Northern Europe and very intensive forestry in Portugal, Galicia, and Gascony. Comparison with National Forest Inventory data provides insight into the overlaps between European scale patterns from the mapping exercise and plot-level observations. This comprehensive map offers a valuable basis for policy decisions, supporting the EU's climate mitigation objectives and improving the understanding of forest management regimes across Europe.

The research leading to these results has received funding from the European Union Horizon Europe (HORIZON) Research & Innovation programme under the Grant Agreement no. 101056907.

Peer reviewed