Description

European forests cover more than 1/3 of the land area and they play a vital role in Europe’s environment, economy, and society. Forests provide many benefits including climate regulation, raw materials, habitats for biodiversity, and removal of air pollution. Climate change is a major challenge to European forests, as demonstrated by recent heat waves, extended drought periods, and disturbances (storms, wildfires, insect outbreaks). FORWARDS aims to prototype the ForestWard Observatory – a European observatory for forests’ climate change impacts to support decision-making at strategic and operational scales. On the European and national scale, a major objective is to provide a broad perspective of disturbances, future risks, and critical vulnerabilities and threats to forests as strategic support. Current long-term forest monitoring networks provide important information on the impact of climate change on forests but are not designed to provide real-time information for studying forest disturbances. Prompt detection and characterization of forest disturbance and the production of official statistics are of primary importance and a crucial priority for effectively reacting to global warming and properly planning the current and future management of European forests. Accordingly, FORWARDS will provide a comprehensive and pan European assessment of forest disturbances, as well as tools and operative frameworks for monitoring carbon loss and recovery due to forest disturbances by exploiting satellite-based remote sensing data. Of
primary importance, FORWARDS will provide a consistent, and statistically robust disturbance assessment for Europe.