Pollution Takes Its Toll on Europe's Forests
© Environment News Service (ENS) 2000
October 11, 2000
BRUSSELS, Belgium, October 11, 2000 (ENS) - Only one third of Europe's trees are healthy according to the European Commission's annual 2000 report on the continent's forests. Forty-one percent of trees are classified as being in the "warning stage" and 20 percent are damaged, says the report, which concludes that further cuts in air pollution are needed before forests can be sustainably managed.
The European Commission and the United Nations Economic Commission for Europe (UNECE) began monitoring the health of Europe's forests in 1986. Through a network of 5,700 plots in 30 countries, the project has grown into one of the world's largest biomonitoring systems.
Using the same methods at each plot, the vitality and nutrient status of trees and ground vegetation is monitored, in combination with data on climate, and pollution from nitrogen, ozone and sulphur.
The results form a unique source of ecological reference data for scientists, ecologists, forestry managers and climate change researchers.
Forests have a significant impact on levels of carbon dioxide (CO2), the most significant of a number of "greenhouse gases" whose effect is to trap solar energy, resulting in global warming. According to the United States Environmental Protection Agency, tropical deforestation is estimated to have released nearly six billion metric tons of CO2 per year during the 1980s, or about 23 percent of global CO2 emissions from human activities.
During the same period though, about seven percent of global CO2 emissions were offset by CO2 uptake due to forest regrowth in the Northern Hemisphere. Trees naturally sequester carbon, which is then stored in wood products or used as energy sources to substitute for fossil fuels.
So forests are part of the 15 member European Union's plans to cut greenhouse gas emissions under the 1997 Kyoto Protocol. Under the protocol, an addition to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, 39 industrialized nations are committed to reduce greenhouse gas emissions such as carbon dioxide (CO2) by an average of 5.2 percent below 1990 levels in the five year period 2008 to 2012.
A statement issued by the European Commission, the European Union's executive arm, said yesterday's report showed "there is no overall improvement of the vitality of the forests and that great regional differences in development of the situation exist."
"Further reduction of emissions is still needed to guarantee the multiple functions of forests in Europe as a basis for a sustainable forest management," it continued.
The report found a "clear improvement" for western and central European regions and a worsening in the Mediterranean regions. In these regions, defoliation of nearly all tree species has increased considerably during the last five years. For the Central and Northern regions in Europe there are no clear trends.
Under the monitoring project, trees are classified as healthy if they show no loss of needles or leaves. Those said to be at the warning stage show some signs of defoliation while "damaged" trees exhibit more than 25 percent defoliation.
"These results confirm the general trend of deterioration of the crown [defoliation] condition for the main tree species over the last years," said the report. "On average the crown condition in Europe between 1992 and 1999 worsened on approximately 30 percent of the observation plots and improved on only 15 percent of the plots."
Recent European Union initiatives are hoped to improve the forestry situation. The proposal for a "Directive on National Emission Ceilings for Certain Atmospheric Pollutants" common position in June and the "Protocol to Abate Acidification, Eutrophication and Ground-level Ozone" signed by 27 parties under the UNECE Convention last December are two such measures.
The monitoring program will help to verify the effects of these measures on forest ecosystems.
The program's annual report will shortly be available on the internet at http://europa.eu.int/comm/dg06/fore/index_en.htm