Future forest monitoring in the European Union.
Providing information for multifunctional forest management.
Uppsala, Sweden 11-12 November 2009

Programme (in pdf)
The conference on future forest monitoring in the European Union promotes a streamlined European forest monitoring programme capable of delivering the necessary information in support of EU and member state policies of relevance for the European forest ecosystems. Bringing together national, EU and international bodies involved in forest monitoring, assessment and policy as well as scientists will create an opportunity to identify monitoring activities which must be maintained and strengthened.

Demands on European forests will become stronger and spatially more diversified. This is also the case for the wood production due to e.g. the growing market for renewable energy and the general globalisation of the forest market.  Decision-makers and stakeholders in the EU and the member states must be provided with the necessary information on forests and forest ecosystems to be able to balance production of wood and other traditional non-wood resources vis-à-vis biodiversity and forest ecosystem services. Furthermore the European forest ecosystems, like forests globally, must be adaptively managed to protect the forest ecosystems from a number of threats which in several cases can be expected to increase with a changed climate (invasive alien/pest species, storms, forest fires, air pollution etc.).

Establishing an efficient European forest monitoring should build upon existing monitoring programmes. National forest inventories need to be streamlined to deliver comparable data on the European level. This should build upon activities towards common standards initiated by the forest resource reporting to UNECE/FAO, the Ministerial Conferences for the Protection of Forest in Europe, the ICP Forests monitoring in the context of the UN Convention on Long-Range Transported Air Pollution, the EU Commission, the European Environment Agency and the European National Forest Inventory Network.

The wider role of the forest ecosystems will also require additional information to be identified  with respect to international commitments (e.g. UN Framework Convention on Climate Change and the UN Convention on Biological Diversity), EU legislation (Habitats and Bird Directives, the Water Framework Directive, measures against forest fires etc.) and  emerging EU policies (e.g. as regards renewable energy, land use,  alien invasive species etc.).

The conference is organised by Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences (SLU) in assocation with the Swedish EU Presidency in autumn 2009. Other organisers of the event are: MCPFE, FAO, Ministry of Agriculture (Sweden), UNECE, Skogstyrelsen (Sweden), ICP Forests, Naturvårdsverket (Sweden), EFI, JRC (European Commission), ENFIN, EEA and IUFRO.