LIFE PRotection of Old Growth Forests in Europe: Strengthening primary and old growth forest protection in Europe by capitalising on World Heritage sites (LIFE)

Background
The EU Biodiversity Strategy to 2030 explicitly states that "10% of EU land (and 10% of EU sea) should be strictly protected”. As part of this focus on strict protection, it will be crucial to define, map, monitor and strictly protect all the EU's remaining primary and old growth forests. At this moment, however, unambiguous, and overall accepted pan-European definitions and criteria for selection and mapping primary and old growth forests are missing, and existent mappings are only local or incomplete. Beside these technical limitations, the awareness on the importance of ecosystem services provided by the old growth forest ecosystem must be strengthened and communicated to policy makers and broad public at the same time.

Objectives
The LIFE PROGNOSES project, firstly, aims at developing robust criteria and methods to assess and map old growth forest in Europe. This methodology will be applied in-situ on a representative set of old growth forest in the EU (within the UNESCO World Heritage Beech Forest Network). The second objective is to identify and quantify ecosystem services on a selected set of sites. These methods and results can then be applied and extrapolated to other old growth forests all over Europe. The third objective is to raise awareness of stakeholders of the outstanding value of remaining primary and old growth forests in Europe, and on the necessary actions to be taken for their conservation.

The project will contribute to the implementation of the EU Biodiversity Strategy to 2030, to the objectives of the European Green Deal on forest protection, and to the implementation of the Habitats Directive and Birds Directive. All activities will take into account the existing European policy and legal framework applicable to primary and old growth forests.

Results

Expected results: 

• Preparation of a detailed set of indicators and threshold values for identification and quality assessment of old growth forests;
• Compilation of existing mapping products (including remote-sensing) and mapping methodologies and criteria;
• Field mapping covering all biogeographic regions with significant amounts of beech forest and beech forest types (according to the EEA typology);
• Assessing and quantifying the value of a set of ecosystem services (microclimate, carbon storage biodiversity, and recreation and tourism) of primary and old growth forests;
• Communication and awareness raising to strengthen conservation of old growth forest and their ecosystem services.

Project web page: https://lifeprognoses.eu/