Supporting EU Climate Goals through Improved Forest Monitoring, Modelling and Management

The EU's climate goals depend primarily on reducing greenhouse gas emissions. However, carbon sequestration by forest ecosystems is an important component in achieving carbon neutrality, but their ability to do so is declining. Between 1990 and 2022, European forests removed about 434 Mt CO_2eq yr^-1 from the atmosphere, equivalent to about 10% of the EU's total emissions. However, the forest carbon sink has decreased by nearly a third, from an average of  -457Mt CO_2eq yr^-1  between 2010-2014  to -332 Mt CO_2eq yr^-1 between 2020-2022. To meet the EU's 2050 climate neutrality goal, the forest sector needs to offset 8% of emissions per year, but it is currently only achieving 6% per year. This is a 2% shortfall, equivalent to the emissions of Latvia and Estonia together.

In recent years, significant developments have been made in forest monitoring and modeling and in the understanding of forest ecosystem dynamics. However, scientific and practical challenges still limit the information available for policy decisions. Here, we propose a roadmap for enhanced research and forest management actions for climate adaptation and mitigation from the stand to the continental scale. The aim is to identify forest monitoring and modeling advances needed to inform sustainable policy decisions on forest and land management. 

This roadmap includes:

Short-term (< 3 years): Improving monitoring of forest disturbances types and intensity, tree mortality, and biodiversity using satellite data, ground observations, as well as improving the secure access to private forest data.

Medium-term (< 5 years): Understanding how forest management, biodiversity, and climate change affect carbon sinks and forest resilience, in particular the response to climate extremes, and developing long-term projections of the European forest carbon sink (including under worse case scenarios).

Long-term (beyond 5 years): Deepening understanding of how management practices affect deadwood and soil organic carbon to guide policies that integrate these factors into broader forest management and climate adaptation strategies.

We highlight new research results that can contribute to the goals and support the EU's climate objectives, including achieving climate neutrality by 2050, by providing policymakers with robust and reliable information on forest resources and carbon sink.