European forests have been losing more biomass since 2018 and storing less CO₂

Europe’s forests are losing more biomass than previously thought, and disturbances such as drought and pest infestations are causing increasingly severe losses in some of Europe’s oldest forests. The situation has deteriorated significantly since 2018.

Absolute severity measures the amount of above-ground biomass lost following a disturbance such as wind damage, fire, insect infestation or logging. ESA

These are the findings of a study published in Nature Geoscience. The research, which was supported by an initiative of the European Space Agency (ESA), revealed that biomass losses increased dramatically after 2018, as drought, windstorms and insect infestations increasingly affected some of the oldest and most biomass-rich forests in central Europe.

The study was supported by the ESA’s Climate Change Initiative through its RECCAP-2 project, an international effort that uses satellite-based climate datasets to support the Global Stocktake under the Paris Agreement.

For the first time, scientists have quantified the biomass losses caused by forest disturbances across Europe, rather than simply measuring the affected area. They found that, for every hectare of forest affected, 46% more biomass has been lost since 2018.

Europe’s forests cover approximately 39% of the continent’s land area and store 10.6 billion tonnes of carbon in above-ground biomass, including leaves, branches and tree trunks. This represents one of Europe’s largest terrestrial carbon stores. However, between 1985 and 2023, disturbances such as wildfires, pest infestations and logging resulted in the loss of an estimated 6.5 billion tonnes of above-ground biomass across Europe, although a substantial proportion of these losses has since been offset by

Original Record.

This archived record authored by ‘Helena Mottram’ at ‘METEORED (Your Weather)’ was recovered from data set:

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