The 2013’s EU Forest Strategy calls for “strengthening the forest knowledge base to better understand the complex environmental and societal challenges that the forest sector faces. In addition, mapping and assessing the state of forest ecosystems and their services requires better EU forest information.”
To achieve this aim, the Forest Information System of Europe (FISE) was set up to collect harmonised Europe-wide information on the multifunctional role of forests and forest resources and integrating diverse information systems and data platforms (such as the European Forest Fire Information System, EFFIS), into a dynamic modular system that combines data and models into applications. The development was carried out by the Joint Research Centre (JRC) and the hosting of the platform is done by the European Environment Agency (EEA).
At the moment, FISE provides information on “basic forest data”, such as forest land cover, tree cover density and change of forest land cover. In the future, four other main topics will be addressed, namely “nature and biodiversity”, “forest and climate change”, “forest health and resilience” and “bio-economy”.
