Forest coverage in Latvia: a disputed forest area does not reflect the biodiversity of it.
🌲 In 2020, the European Environment Agency launched the Forest Information System for Europe portal (https://forest.eea.europa.eu/). According to the information system's data, provided by Corine Land Cover, the forest coverage of Latvia is declining.
However, the sources of data on forest areas in Latvia speak otherwise. The most commonly used are the forest monitoring data of the State Forest Service and the Latvian State Forest Research Institute “Silava”. The data of the State Forest Service is available for the period from 2000, while the data from "Silava" were only available from 2008 (when the first monitoring cycle was completed). The developments in trends of forest area reported by these two data sources coincide: the area is growing (the fall in the data of State Forest Service in 2016 is due to a change of database rather than nature).
Furthermore, despite the trends calculated domestically being the same, even the total forest area varies because of a differing approach to the data identified by the relevant sources as being a “forest”. In the data of the State Forest Service, forests also include clearings, but in data of the "Silava", which does not include clearings, a “forest” also includes agricultural land containing more than 1000 trees per hectare. Different methods of collecting data could also play a role.
It is clear, therefore, that a "forest" by Corine Land Cover standards, unlike Latvia's “forest”, is one whose area is larger and which has a larger wood crown. The data from the satellite will not show both areas where the trees or the covered forest area is small, but Latvia's data includes one and the other. Simultaneously, with a high probability, everything presented as a forest by Corine Land Cover is also a forest in Latvia's data.
The above suggests that the data of Corine Land Cover, used by the European Environment Agency, does not include clearings but includes agricultural lands (because it measures the land surface by what is growing there rather than politically by what is meant to be there). In fact, the Directorate-General for Environment also points out this in its letter, since the “transitional forest land”, which is added to the area of forests to a nearly unchanged total area, is mostly the same clearing areas.
Given the crown covering threshold, it is clear that the Corine Land Cover data does not include young stands. Considering the Latvian forest landscape, it is estimated that the Corine Land Cover data, therefore in reality include forest covering at least at the age of 20. If Latvia's forest landscape is assessed only by areas of forests over the age of 20, both the data of “Silava” and VMD show the same trend as Corine Land Cover – a decline in forest coverage.
Nevertheless, despite changes in forest area allowing for some assessment of the overall situation, often such large judgments are too abstract to tell the state of forests and their quality, especially if one considers forests not only from a wood-harvesting perspective but as a habitat for forest flora and fauna. For instance, changes in residential areas would not illustrate the number of single-room apartments without any amenities and the number of private houses. And on how much of this residential area nothing has been built yet, but certainly will be as there are projects in place.
Some specials only habit forests with a certain minimum forest area, while some only in forests of a certain age. However, the changes in forest coverage do not reflect the state of biodiversity and sustainability in the mid-term and long-term. Therefore, to be truly sustainable, not only economically, other qualitative factors shall be taken into account, which, no doubt, will be of greater importance in the two upcoming decades in forestry and European policy.