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\t\t\t\t\t\t05\/08\/2026<\/span> Europe\u2019s forests are losing more biomass than previously thought, with disturbances such as drought and pests causing increasingly large losses from some of the oldest forests in Europe. This situation has deteriorated markedly since 2018.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n These are the findings of a study published in Nature Geoscience<\/i>. The research, which was supported by a European Space Agency (ESA) initiative, found that biomass losses increased sharply after 2018 as drought, windstorms and insect outbreaks increasingly affected some of central Europe\u2019s oldest and most biomass-rich forests.<\/p>\n The study was supported by the ESA Climate Change Initiative through its RECCAP-2 project, an international effort that uses satellite-based climate datasets to support the Paris Agreement’s Global Stocktake.<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n For the first time, scientists have quantified how much biomass is lost from forest disturbances across Europe, rather than simply measuring the area affected. They found that, for each hectare of disturbed forest, 46% more biomass is being lost since 2018.<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n Europe\u2019s forests cover about 39% of its land area and store 10.6 billion tonnes of carbon in above-ground biomass, for example in their leaves, branches and trunks. This is one of Europe\u2019s largest terrestrial carbon stocks. However, between 1985 and 2023, disturbances such as wildfires, pests and logging caused an estimated total of 6.5 billion tonnes of above-ground biomass to be lost across Europe, although a substantial share of these losses has since been offset by forest regrowth.<\/p>\n For decades, scientists have assessed the impact of forest disturbances by measuring the area of land affected. But area alone does not accurately quantify biomass losses. A wildfire, for example, can sweep across a large area of open, shrubby Mediterranean woodland yet remove relatively little biomass, whereas a similar area of dense, mature forest would suffer far greater losses.<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n This study is the first to measure not just where Europe\u2019s forests were lost, but how much biomass disappeared along with them \u2013 across the whole continent and over a period of nearly four decades.<\/p>\n \u201cWhat surprised me most was how differently disturbances translate into biomass loss across Europe. Two events can look almost identical on a map yet have very different implications for the amount of carbon stored in forests. Until now we’ve largely been flying blind on that difference,\u201d said Katja Kowalski, lead author of the paper and a postdoctoral researcher in the Earth Observation for Ecosystem Management group at the Technical University of Munich.<\/p>\n The study combines two satellite records: annual maps of tree cover loss across Europe derived from the Landsat archive and a high-resolution biomass map for 2019, showing how much biomass each forest held per unit area. Overlaying the two, the team reconstructed how much biomass Europe’s forests have actually lost, year by year.<\/p>\n The results reveal a clear break around 2018, when severe droughts affected countries across central Europe, notably Germany, the Czech Republic and Poland. The droughts left trees weaker and less able to defend themselves, triggering mass outbreaks of the European spruce bark beetle, which bores into the bark and can kill a mature tree within weeks.<\/p>\n While logging accounted for about 82% of biomass loss between 1985 and 2023, the remaining 18% loss caused by natural disturbances drove the sharp rise since 2018.<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n A second study, also supported by the RECCAP-2 project has produced complementary findings. Published in National Science Review<\/i>, the study found that increasing loss and damage to forests is putting their role in climate change mitigation at risk.<\/p>\n By combining national forest reports with satellite maps of disturbance and biomass, including the biomass dataset from ESA’s Climate Change Initiative, the team projected how Europe’s forest carbon sink is likely to evolve to 2030. They found that the capacity of European forests to absorb and store carbon is likely to have decreased by 39% in the period 2010 to 2030. This is due to disturbances that far outpace the ability of forests to naturally regrow and recover.<\/p>\n \u201cEurope can increase its forest area but still lose carbon sink capacity. The real question is whether growth and recovery can keep up with disturbances and harvest. Right now they can’t \u2013 and closing that gap means managing our forests differently, above all by harvesting less as natural disturbances keep rising,\u201d notes Philippe Ciais, from France’s Laboratory of Climate and Environmental Sciences, co-author of the\u00a0National Science Review<\/i> study and overall science leader of ESA\u2019s RECCAP-2 project.<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n
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\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/figcaption><\/figure>\nHow much biomass is really being lost?<\/h2>\n
\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/figcaption><\/figure>\nForests disturbed faster than they can regrow<\/h2>\n