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Actual European forest management by region, tree species and owner based on 714,000 re-measured trees in national forest inventories

Schelhaas, Mart Jan ; Fridman, Jonas ; Hengeveld, Geerten M. ; Henttonen, Helena M. ; Lehtonen, Aleksi ; Kies, Uwe ; Krajnc, Nike ; Lerink, Bas ; Dhubháin, Áine Ní and Polley, Heino , et al. (2018) In PLoS ONE 13(11).
Abstract

Background European 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. Methods Based on a large dataset of 714,000 re-measured trees in National Forest inventories from 13 regions, we are... (More)

Background European 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. Methods Based 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. Conclusions From 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.

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type
Contribution to journal
publication status
published
subject
in
PLoS ONE
volume
13
issue
11
article number
e0207151
publisher
Public Library of Science (PLoS)
external identifiers
  • scopus:85056322238
  • pmid:30418996
ISSN
1932-6203
DOI
10.1371/journal.pone.0207151
language
English
LU publication?
no
id
8516285a-562f-4dca-ba0b-f156df75964a
date added to LUP
2020-11-19 22:43:54
date last changed
2024-02-17 08:34:11
@article{8516285a-562f-4dca-ba0b-f156df75964a,
  abstract     = {{<p>Background European 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. Methods Based 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. Conclusions From 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.</p>}},
  author       = {{Schelhaas, Mart Jan and Fridman, Jonas and Hengeveld, Geerten M. and Henttonen, Helena M. and Lehtonen, Aleksi and Kies, Uwe and Krajnc, Nike and Lerink, Bas and Dhubháin, Áine Ní and Polley, Heino and Pugh, Thomas A.M. and Redmond, John J. and Rohner, Brigitte and Temperli, Cristian and Vayreda, Jordi and Nabuurs, Gert Jan}},
  issn         = {{1932-6203}},
  language     = {{eng}},
  number       = {{11}},
  publisher    = {{Public Library of Science (PLoS)}},
  series       = {{PLoS ONE}},
  title        = {{Actual European forest management by region, tree species and owner based on 714,000 re-measured trees in national forest inventories}},
  url          = {{http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0207151}},
  doi          = {{10.1371/journal.pone.0207151}},
  volume       = {{13}},
  year         = {{2018}},
}