30 years ago, several criteria and indicators for the sustainable management of European forests were developed by Forest Europe, the Ministerial Conference on the Protection of Forests in Europe. Among them, a subset of ten key indicators relating to the conservation of biological diversity in forests was defined. Since then, these indicators have been widely used by several countries for their national inventories and forest policy-making.<\/p>\n
However, in view of ongoing climate change, habitat modification and biodiversity loss, a process of revision of these indicators has recently been undertaken by Forest Europe.<\/p>\n
In their report published last March, additional (sub)indicators were described. Within the species diversity criterion, it was proposed to add a parameter estimating the proportion of resilient species on the studied area. Within the naturalness criterion, Forest Europe suggests assessing the proportion of old-growth and near-natural forests. A number of new forest management indicators have also been proposed, aimed at assessing the areas of forest managed under different regimes: continuous cover, free evolution forestry, agroforestry, traditional management, clear-cutting, coppicing, etc. Indeed, monitoring these indicators is crucial to highlight the impact of different management approaches on forest biodiversity, and thus support decision-making and facilitate the development of strategies for sustainable forest management.<\/p>","protected":false},"featured_media":41145,"template":"","acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n