Enhancing accessibility and understandability of forest mitigation pathways anddata through an integrated science-policy interface

Forests are central to climate change mitigation while simultaneously delivering co-benefits to biodiversity, bioeconomy, and climate adaptation. Yet scientific evidence on forest’s mitigation capacities is often fragmented across datasets, spatial scales, and scenario assumptions, consequently limiting accessibility, understandability, and transparency for decision-making. This contribution presents the ForestNavigator Portal, a science–policy interface designed to support the integrated exploration of forest carbon mitigation pathways and associated mitigation potentials in the European Union.

The platform combines spatially explicit forest monitoring data with emerging pathway outputs derived from alternative policy scenarios to enable a consistent assessment of both historical dynamics, present conditions, and future mitigation options under a range of policy assumptions. The first portal component, the Data Explorer, provides harmonised geospatial indicators, including forest cover, disturbance, and carbon stock change, visualised primarily through spatial maps to support examination of recent trends and disturbance regimes relevant for monitoring and assessment of changes in forest carbon stocks. The Pathways Explorer, the second component, enables comparative analysis of mitigation pathways at EU level, while also supporting exploration of pathways at country level, informed by national data and models, across alternative policy scenarios using aggregated indicators and comparative visual summaries reflecting alternative forest management, wood-use, biodiversity, and adaptation options. Policy scenarios will include an EU reference policy scenario as well as alternative policy pathways for EU forests, based on stakeholder’s input from scenario co-development exercises.

A core methodological contribution is the platform’s capacity to make forest mitigation pathways directly comparable across alternative policy scenarios, with a focus on improving the accessibility and understandability of pathway assessments while supporting the exploration of uncertainty through comparison across alternative policy scenarios and interactions across key dimensions. Interactive comparison functions, split-screen visualisations, and downloadable harmonised datasets reduce barriers between complex modelling outputs and policy-relevant interpretation. Particular attention is given to disturbance monitoring within the Data Explorer and to adaptation-oriented considerations in pathway exploration.

By integrating monitoring data and pathway results within a unified interface, the ForestNavigator Portal advances the practical use of forest science for climate mitigation planning. The approach supports evaluation of combined forest mitigation portfolios rather than isolated measures and contributes to improved science-based understanding of forests capacity to mitigate climate change under evolving environmental and socio-economic conditions.