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Quantifying forest change in the European Union

Nature volume 592, pages E13–E14 (2021)Cite this article

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Matters Arising to this article was published on 28 April 2021

The Original Article was published on 01 July 2020

arising from G. Ceccherini et al. Nature https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-020-2438-y (2020).

Using remote-sensing data on forest cover change in the European Union (EU), Ceccherini et al.1 report an abrupt increase in harvested biomass (69%) and in harvested forest area (43%) on the basis of a comparison between two periods, 2010–2015 and 2016–2018, in a single decade. They demonstrate a spike in harvests in 2016–2018, and use the short-term rise to infer a long-term trend of increasing harvests, causing them to question the viability of European forests remaining a terrestrial carbon sink in the future. They then suggest that the recent expansion of wood markets around the globe may portend sustained growth in the area harvested for forest products in the EU, and that this might adversely affect goals to mitigate climate change in the coming decades. We feel that this argument is misinformed and, together with their analysis, leads Ceccherini et al.1 to several errors in their conclusions.

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References

  1. Ceccherini, G. et al. Abrupt increase in harvested forest area over Europe after 2015. Nature 583, 72–77 (2020).

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  3. Swedish Forest Agency. The Swedish National Forest Inventory (accessed 15 August 2020); https://www.slu.se/en/Collaborative-Centres-and-Projects/the-swedish-national-forest-inventory/

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Program for the Human Environment, The Rockefeller University, New York, NY, USA

    Iddo K. Wernick

  2. Laboratoire des Sciences du Climat et de l’Environnement, CEA-CNRS-UVSQ-8 UPSACLAY, Gif sur Yvette, France

    Philippe Ciais

  3. Department of Forest Resource Management, Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences (SLU), Umeå, Sweden

    Jonas Fridman

  4. Department of Forest Ecology and Management, Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences, Umeå, Sweden

    Peter Högberg, Annika Nordin & Pekka E. Kauppi

  5. Natural Resources Institute Finland, Helsinki, Finland

    Kari T. Korhonen

  6. Department of Forest Sciences, University of Helsinki, Helsinki, Finland

    Pekka E. Kauppi

Authors
  1. Iddo K. Wernick
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  2. Philippe Ciais
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  3. Jonas Fridman
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  4. Peter Högberg
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  5. Kari T. Korhonen
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  6. Annika Nordin
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  7. Pekka E. Kauppi
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Contributions

This Comment was initiated by I.K.W. and P.E.K. P.C., J.F., P.H., K.T.K. and A.N. all contributed to the writing and editing of the Comment.

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Correspondence to Iddo K. Wernick.

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Wernick, I.K., Ciais, P., Fridman, J. et al. Quantifying forest change in the European Union. Nature 592, E13–E14 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-021-03293-w

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-021-03293-w

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