We are pleased to announce the publication of the new OptFor-EU report Methodology of Land Cover Datasets for Global and Regional Climate Models. This report represents a significant step forward in understanding and managing the relationship between Europe’s forests and its changing climate.
This report presents the development of three new high-level datasets contributing to better representation of forests in regional climate models. The three datasets provide new resolutions as follows:
- LANDMATE PFT dataset: A high-resolution (~ 2 km) land cover dataset suitable for RCM studies on convection-permitting scales in Europe.
- LUCAS LUC dataset: A high-resolution (~ 10 km) dataset showing historical and projected land use and cover changes, including future scenarios such as SSP126, which represents strong afforestation in Europe.
- EFT dataset: A detailed and consistent dataset representing the tree distribution across Europe at 100 m horizontal resolution.
By integrating Forest Management Practices (FMPs) like thinning, the datasets enable more realistic modelling of how management decisions impact temperature, precipitation, and soil moisture.
These datasets have been applied in case studies across Lower Saxony (Germany) and Arges-Teleorman (Romania), demonstrating how forest management influences regional climates and providing actionable insights for forest managers and policymakers. Additionally, the report includes instruments and methodologies that can be applied to other case study areas, enabling the development of new datasets tailored to different regions. This ensures that the approach can be adapted and expanded to support sustainable forest management across Europe.
In line with OptFor-EU’s commitment to collaboration, all datasets and associated code are openly available. This ensures researchers, forest managers, and policymakers can adapt and expand the work to drive greater impact. This open-access approach will also play a key role in the development of the Decision Support System (DSS), set to launch this year.
