Forest Resources

Forests cover more than one third of the European land surface. The forest area of Europe amounts to about 10 million km 2, of which nearly 80% represent the vast forest areas in the Russian Federation. Recent estimates indicate that the forest area has been expanding in many European countries. The average annual increase of forest amounts to approximately 0.5 million hectares per year.

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The distribution of the forest area in km 2 from Portugal to the Ural mountains

The total volume of timber in Europe’s forests is slightly above 100 billion m 3. More than three quarters of that volume is located in the Russian Federation. For the past decades the timber volume has been increasing due to the fact that the extraction of timber from forests has amounted less than the annual increment.

Forest ownership varies widely across Europe, the pattern often reflecting political histories. About two thirds of the forest is in private hands in the north-western and centrally located countries of the European Union. In the new EU Member States the case is just the opposite. High levels of public ownership are common in Southeastern Europe and Eastern Europe ranging up to 90-100%. Countries with the highest levels of forest in private ownership are Portugal (~90%), Austria and Sweden (80%).

Besides their economic role, forests have been receiving an ever increasing importance in providing services such as protection against soil erosion, avalanches and noise pollution, water balancing and carbon sequestration. They are home to an abundant array of biodiversity and rank high in popularity for recreation.

EFI Activities on Forest Resources

Data and information on forest resources are essential for EFI's resource and econometric modelling, mapping and reporting activities. High quality information on forest resources constitutes a basis for sound forest science in the context of topics such as climate change, biodiversity and bioenergy. Projects dealing with forest resources include:


EFI also maintains Databases and Information Services on forests.

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