PathFinder - Towards an Integrated Consistent European LULUCF Monitoring and Policy Pathway Assessment Framework
The EU-funded PathFinder project contributes to improved understanding of the potential role of Europe’s forest management in mitigating climate change while protecting biodiversity and supporting the bioeconomy.
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Project details
Forests play an essential role in human well-being and health as well as provide a wide array of functions such as biodiversity protection, wood production, and climate change mitigation. Managing forests in a sustainable way requires efficient forest management strategies to obtain detailed and accurate information.
There is a need for coherent and transparent European forest monitoring and reporting systems. Existing models poorly represent the multiple roles that European forests are increasingly asked to play, including climate mitigation, biodiversity protection, and bioeconomic value. Policy makers do not have sufficient and reliable scientific information to device policies that ensure optimal mitigation contributions from forests with acceptable trade-off towards effects on biodiversity and bioeconomy.
The EU-funded PathFinder project aims to develop and demonstrate an innovative forest monitoring and pathway assessment system allowing consistent EU greenhouse gas reporting of LULUCF (Land Use, Land Use Change & Forestry) in combination with advanced pathway assessments. The goal is to provide policy makers with essential insights assisting in the entire policy cycle, from policy design to implementation and continuous monitoring of forests. The monitoring systems will allow to forecast future forest scenarios and outcomes, thus facilitating trade-off analysis of forest.
PathFinder’s objectives are:
- To develop a consistent field survey in close coordination with national and EU stakeholders, focused on both carbon pools and biodiversity indicators with demonstrated implementation across 25 EU countries
- To co-design a future forest scenario framework for analysing the impact of policy decisions and resulting management actions on the future forest climate mitigation potential, biodiversity, and other ES
- To develop a mapping and estimation platform for LULUCF and biodiversity monitoring based on field and remotely sensed data with demonstrated implementation across the EU
- To co-design possible forest management pathways and offering ways to integrate scientific knowledge in policy and practice
The PathFinder consortium consists of 24 partners from 15 countries and is coordinated by Norwegian Institute of Bioeconomy Research NIBIO in Norway
