Integrated analysis of harvest statistics provided by remote sensing, national forest inventories and administrative survey systems: An example from Italy

Forests are a key element for reaching the EU climate neutrality targets, but natural disturbances, climate change and human activities, make it urgent to set up a continuous monitoring system of the main parameters affecting forest ecosystems. A key parameter is the annual felling: the volume of trees felled during a given reference period. We combine National Forest Inventory data, based on direct field measurements, with yearly time series data derived by remote sensing, to assess the amount of fellings carried out in Italy between 2000 and 2023. Italy was selected as a representative case study as harvest statistics are missing or partially inconsistent, which is also the case for other European countries. We highlighted that no data source, considered individually, can provide a comprehensive estimate of the harvest level and its evolution in time. Between 2000 and 2023, total fellings ranged from a peak of 16.5 million m3 in 2006 to a low of 10.4 million m3 in 2014. A near real-time assessment of the harvest level, such as estimated within our study, is increasingly important to quantify the impact of human activities on forest ecosystems. According to our results, the fellings rate, i.e. the ratio between fellings and increment, was about 0.38 within the latest years. Nevertheless, considering the uncertainty of all input data, the total fellings ranged by about ± 50 %, and the corresponding fellings rate could be significantly larger. From this arises the urgent need to set up a continuous monitoring system, integrating National Forest Inventory surveys and remote sensing data reliably, not only in Italy, but across the EU.