Essential Forest Mitigation Indicators: A participatory, stakeholder-driven approach to guide carbon mitigation through forest management practices in Europe with application in a decision support system

The OptFor-EU Horizon Europe project seeks to develop a Decision Support System (DSS) that provides science-based guidance for optimizing Forest Ecosystem Services (FES) across Europe, with a focus on decarbonization and resilience in response to climate change. A cornerstone of this effort is the development of a novel set of Essential Forest Mitigation Indicators (EFMI) designed to guide forest managers in assessing and enhancing forests' carbon mitigation potential through targeted management practices in eight European case study areas but also scalable for application in other regions.

The development of the EFMI set within the OptFor-EU project is a beneficial support for forest management and climate mitigation practices. This work is innovative on multiple fronts, combining methodological novelty, practical applicability, and technological integration to address previously unfulfilled needs for evidence-based visualization and decision support in forest management.

The EFMI were developed using a participatory, bottom-up approach to ensure their relevance, feasibility, and applicability for stakeholders. Rooted in the Common International Classification of Ecosystem Services (CICES) framework, the indicators emphasize carbon storage, sequestration, and the broader impacts of forest management practices (FMPs) on decarbonization, forest resilience, and old-growth characteristics. The EFMI also incorporate indicators for regional climate regulation, enabling quantification of the effects of forest cover changes on local and regional climates.

The process to define the EFMI began with an extensive review of existing literature and indicator sets, identifying 130 potential indicators. Through internal evaluation and participatory external stakeholder involvement, this list was refined to a set of 22 essential indicators. These are supported by publicly accessible data derived from advanced forest and climate modeling, satellite data, and extensive data mining. Ongoing regional forest and climate modeling experiments will further enable the simulation of FMP impacts on climate conditions and calculation of relevant EFMI.

As the project advances, the EFMI set will be integrated into the DSS, tested across case study areas, and scaled from local to European level. By focusing on this stakeholder-driven set of indicators, the OptFor-EU project ensures its outcomes directly support forest managers in aligning forest management practices with European climate and forest policy goals, while enhancing the long-term sustainability and resilience of forest ecosystem services. The EFMI serve as a innovative, feasible tool for translating policy into actionable, evidence-based forest management strategies.

This study was funded by the Horizon Europe Project OptFor-EU (Grant agreement n°101060554).