Towards a forest information system for Europe

Forests cover over 30% of the European territory in the 25 Member States of the European Union. The maintenance and enhancement of the forest ecosystem is widely recognized as one of the main goals in preserving Europe's environment. Despite of this, the knowledge on Europe's forests is still very limited. This lack of knowledge is related to many intrinsic problems in the European Union, going from different terminologies and methods in data collection at the regional and national levels to the diversity of technical and political goals of the many institutions dealing with environmental management. This process of data scattering and fragmentation is further triggered by the absence of a European forest policy. Several initiatives have dealt with the collection of forestry information, from the global level of FAO reports, through the more detailed TBRFA (Temperate and Boreal Forest Resources Assessment), to the European, national, and regional levels. The collection of pan-European forest statistics has thus been a difficult problem. This article presents the course of past and on-going initiatives of the European Commission to establish a forest information system for Europe on the basis of existing forest monitoring schemes. The system would take advantage of the advances in database management and communication to enable access to forest information. This course is still in progress with several initiatives that may likely lead to a holistic harmonized system of forest information that could facilitate the reporting obligations at the national, European and international levels.