Describing the current forest state in the complex mountainous forest landscape of Austria

The lack of consistent and accessible forest data in Europe still provides a challenge for large-scale assessments and simulation studies. Here we compare two approaches for providing a detailed description of the current forest state in the complex mountainous forest landscape of Austria. Approach A integrates point-based National forest inventory with climate and remote sensing data to produce detailed gridded forest information (forest type and structural attributes) at 1 x 1 km resolution. In addition to these data sets, approach B integrates high resolution (10 m) remote sensing tree species data, which has recently become available for Austria. A special focus lies on how the detailed tree species maps can be used to improve the description of the current forest state.