Hans Verkerk

• Doctor of Science (Agriculture and Forestry)
• Chief Scientist at European Forest Institute

The European Union (EU) uses biodmass to meet its needs for food and feed, energy, and materials. The demand and supply of biomass have environmental, social, and economic impacts. Understanding biomass supply, demand, costs, and their associated impacts is particularly important for relevant EU policy areas, to facilitate solid and evidence-based...

The global forest carbon (C) stock is estimated at 662 Gt of which 45% is in soil organic matter. Thus, comprehensive understanding of the effects of forest management practices on forest soil C stock and greenhouse gas (GHG) fluxes is needed for the development of effective forest-based climate change mitigation strategies. To improve this underst...

The circular bioeconomy offers solutions to curb the effects of climate change by focusing on the use of renewable, biological resources to produce food, energy, materials, and services. The substitution of fossil products by wood-based products can help avoid or reduce greenhouse gas emissions over the life cycle of products. However, it is import...

Because forests provide a myriad of essential services to society, sustainable forest management that considers and promotes the multifunctional role of forests is of key importance. Understanding how forests have been and are being managed is essential to learn how current forest landscapes have been shaped and how management could be improved to...

The forest sector plays an important role in the circular bioeconomy due to its focus on renewable materials that can substitute fossil or greenhouse gas emissions-intensive materials, store carbon in bio-based products and provide ecosystem services. This study investigates the state of the bioeconomy in Brazil and its forest industry. Specificall...

The forest-based bioeconomy relies on using forests as a source of raw material for producing materials and energy, as well as for a variety of other ecosystem services. The uses of forests and wood are many and, to some extent, competing. Can a limited resource simultaneously and sustainably provide raw materials for products, feedstock for energy...

The climate-smart forestry approach was pioneered in 2015 and has been generating increasing interest since then. It was developed as a response to the often very narrow and partial perspective on how forests and the forest-based sector can contribute to climate-change mitigation. Moreover, its basis is the understanding that, in order to effective...

Background: The forest-based industry has been moving towards the manufacture of bio-based products in response to the increasing concern by consumers and governments regarding the use of non-renewable materials and the generation of residues. Various innovative technologies geared towards reducing the environmental footprint of products and proces...

This report addresses the role of forest products in replacing fossil-based and GHG-intensive products. The overarching objective is to provide recommendations to strengthen the contribution of substitution by forest products to sustainable development. To that end, this report firstly provides an overview of the understanding of the bioeconomy and...

Background: The forest-based industry has been moving towards the manufacture of bio-based products in response to the increasing concern by consumers and governments regarding the use of non-renewable materials and the generation of residues. Various innovative technologies geared towards reducing the environmental footprint of products and proces...

Background: There is strong evidence that wood-based products are typically associated with lower fossil-based emissions over their lifecycle than functionally equivalent products made from other materials. However, the potential impact of large-scale material substitution at the market level remains challenging to quantify and is subject to assump...

With its update of the Bioeconomy Strategy and the Green Deal, the European Commission committed itself to a transformation towards a sustainable and climate-neutral European Union. This process is characterised with an enormous complexity, which policymaking needs to acknowledge for designing transition pathways. Modelling can support policymaking...

The Forest Sector Outlook Study, 2020-2040 provides information for the UNECE region that supports decision making by showing the possible medium- and long-term consequences of specific policy choices and structural changes, using scenario analyses whenever possible. The study is the first to cover the entire region and provides results for the mai...

Climate and other human-induced changes will increase water scarcity in world areas such as in the Mediterranean. Adaptation principles need to be urgently incorporated into water management and stakeholder engagement needs to be strengthened at all steps of the management cycle. This study aimed to analyse and compare stakeholder-preferred water m...

Many non-wood forest products (NWFPs) such as mushrooms and berries are collected and consumed in Europe; but both national statistical and scientific data on this topic are reported only for a limited number of countries, products and case-study areas. Without an adequate quantitative basis, their importance as source of food and income, their lin...

Ceccherini et al.1 reported an abrupt increase in harvested forest—in terms of both biomass and area—in Europe from 2016, and suggested that this reflected expanding wood markets encouraged by the bioec- onomy policies of the European Union (EU). They used Global Forest Watch2 and GlobBiomass3 data together with an analysis that sought to remove na...

The aim of the REDIIBIO project is to provide technical assistance to the Commission to promote the robust and harmonised implementation of the new sustainability criteria for forest and agricultural biomass under the REDII (call for tender ENER/C1/2019-439) and for the preparation of relevant implementing acts. The specific objective of this proje...

The EU’s 2018 Bioeconomy Strategy Update and the European Green Deal recently confirmed that the bioeconomy is high on the political agenda in Europe. Here, we propose a conceptual analysis framework for quantifying and analyzing the development of the EU bioeconomy. The bioeconomy has several related concepts (e.g., bio-based economy, green econom...

Managing genetic diversity is of key importance in fostering resilience of forest ecosystems to climate change. We carried out a survey reaching over 200 forest owners and managers from 15 European countries to understand their perceptions of the main threats to forest ecosystems, their knowledge of forest genetic resources (FGR) and their attitude...

The key aim of this report is to show how the forest sector can help the Russian Federation to meet its Paris Agreement targets and, at the same time, how the sector can contribute to improve the economy. This is linked to building an innovative strategy of sustainable forest management, addressing conservation as well as productivity, emphasizing...

Primary forests are critical for forest biodiversity and provide key ecosystem services. In Europe, these forests are particularly scarce and it is unclear whether they are sufficiently protected. Here we aim to: (a) understand whether extant primary forests are representative of the range of naturally occurring forest types, (b) identify forest ty...

Mushrooms, berries and other Non-Wood Forest Products (NWFPs) are an important part of forest recreation, rural income and of cultural heritage. Due to poor data on their collection and use, they are often ignored in forest policy and management decisions, which could impair those livelihoods that depend on NWFPs as an income source. We conducted a...

To achieve the objectives of the Paris Climate Agreement, a significant reduction in carbon dioxide emissions is needed, as well as increased removals by carbon sinks. In this context, we argue that Climate-Smart Forestry is a necessary, but still missing component in national strategies for implementing actions under the Paris Agreement. Climate-S...

Background European forests are considered a crucial resource for supplying biomass to a growing bio-economy in Europe. This study aimed to assess the potential availability of forest biomass from European forests and its spatial distribution. We tried to answer the questions (i) how is the potential forest biomass availability spatially distribute...

The aim of this study is to help build a knowledge base for the review of the EU Forest Strategy that was adopted by the European Commission in 2013. The EU Forest Strategy addresses 8 priority areas that were identified as being particularly relevant for forests and the forest-based sector until 2020. These priority areas address: (i) support of r...

Executive summary Forests have multiple roles, but the role of forests in climate change mitigation has become increasingly important due to the urgent need to reduce climate change impacts. Forests remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere via photosynthesis, and store carbon in biomass and soil. When forests are harvested, part of the carbon is r...

Aim Primary forests have high conservation value but are rare in Europe due to historic land use. Yet many primary forest patches remain unmapped, and it is unclear to what extent they are effectively protected. Our aim was to (1) compile the most comprehensive European‐scale map of currently known primary forests, (2) analyse the spatial determina...

Explorations of future land use change are important to understand potential conflicts between competing land uses, trade-offs associated with particular land change trajectories, and the effectiveness of policies to steer land systems into desirable states. Most model-based explorations and scenario studies focused on conversions in broad land use...

Assessments of land-system change have dominantly focused on conversions among broad land-use categories, whereas intensity changes within these categories have received less attention. Considering that both modes of land change typically result in diverse patterns and trajectories of land-system change, there is a need to develop approaches to red...

Plausible scenarios of future land use derived from model projections may differ substantially from what is actually desired by society, and identifying such mismatches is important for identifying policies to resolve them. This paper presents an approach to link explorative projections of future land use for the European Union to normative visions...

Protection of natural or semi-natural ecosystems is an important part of societal strategies for maintaining biodiversity, ecosystem services, and achieving overall sustainable development. The assessment of multiple emerging land use trade-offs is complicated by the fact that land use changes occur and have consequences at local, regional, and eve...

The continuously growing global demands on a finite land resource will require better strategic policies and management of trade-offs to avoid conflicts between different land-use sectors. Visions of the future can support strategic planning by stimulating dialogue, building a consensus on shared priorities and providing long-term targets. We prese...

Wildfires represent a threat to forests and society and the risk of wildfires is expected to increase with global change. How should wildfires be tackled in the future? A paradigm shift is needed from the current focus on fire suppression to the management of forests, accompanied by the improved understanding that forests are a valuable resource an...

Climate change is expected to reduce water availability in the Mediterranean region and water management needs to adapt to future conditions. The aims of this study were (1) to develop a participatory approach for identifying and evaluating management options for river basin climate adaptation and (2) to apply and evaluate the approach in four case...

Research and Innovation (R&I) plays a central role in developing advanced biofuels technologies to help achieve the EU’s climate and energy targets. This study examines the R&I potential for feedstock production, advanced biofuels production, and use of advanced biofuels. The study quantifies R&I potential under future scenarios where EU targets ar...

The European Union (EU) 2020 Biodiversity strategy aims at guaranteeing and enhancing the future supply of ecosystem services (‘ES’) in the member states. In an ex-ante assessment of plausible environmental policies, we projected the supply of 10 ES under 3 policy alternatives of land-use change (‘Nature Protection’, ‘Payment for carbon sequestrati...

Lignocellulosic biomass from forests and forest industries represents a crucial resource for the bioeconomy. Many assessments have been carried out over the last decade to quantify biomass potentials from forests and forest industries. The results from these assessments are quite diverse because of varying definitions and assumptions. Here we repor...

Many countries have developed their own systems for projecting forest resources and wood availability. Although studies using these tools are helpful for developing national policies, they do not provide a consistent assessment for larger regions such as the European Union or Europe as a whole. Individual national-scale studies differ considerably...

Climate change and transition towards a bioeconomy are seen as both challenges and opportunities for the forest-based sector in Europe. Transition towards a bioeconomy will in most cases rely on intensified use of renewable resources and/or advancement in technology. However, how can the intensified use of renewable resources be combined with clima...

Este documento tiene como objetivo proporcionar al lector la información necesaria para guiar un desarrollo participativo del Plan de Adaptación a Escala de Cuenca. El inicio de esta guía ofrece información general acerca del contexto del proyecto BeWater y subraya la importancia de la adaptación, las posibilidades técnicas más recientes en plan...

We present an assessment of the spatial pattern of ecosystem services (ES) associations across Europe based on models of eleven ES and one dis-service, mapped at the extent of twenty-seven Member States of the European Union (EU27) on a 1 km² grid. We isolated three clusters of cells sharing common features in multi-ES supply associated with the ma...

This document is intended to provide the reader with the necessary information to guide a participatory development of a River Basin Adaptation Plan. The handbook begins with more general information on the context of the BeWater project and highlights the importance of adaptation, the state of the art in river basin planning, society’s role in the...

The BeWater project offered a unique opportunity to contribute to adaptation policy design and practices with experience-based knowledge. In four case studies located in the cardinal points of the Mediterranean region, the BeWater consortium partnered with expert organisations and members of the local communities to elaborate adaptive water managem...

Policy Brief I of the BeWater project

http://www.efi.int/files/attachments/publications/efi_tr_99_2016_verkerk_et_al.pdf The European Forest Information SCENario Model (EFISCEN) is a large-scale forest model that projects forest resource development on regional to European scale. The model uses national forest inventory data as a main source of input to describe the current structure...

Assessing changes in the extent and management intensity of land use is crucial to understanding land-system dynamics and their environmental and social outcomes. Yet, changes in the spatial patterns of land management intensity, and thus how they might relate to changes in the extent of land uses, remains unclear for many world regions. We compile...

eLetter response to the Naudt et al.article in Science 351, 597 (2016). Afforestation and forest management are important for mitigating climate change. However, by analysing how afforestation and management modified Europe’s forests in extent, stocking and species composition in 2010 as compared to 1750, Naudts et al. (2016) recently claimed that...

This file contains the full report text of "State of Europe's Forest 2015". Due to size limitations, the annexes are presented in a separate file upload. Together the two files make up the entire 314 pages report.

In Europe, both forest area and growing stock have increased since the 1950s, and European forests have acted as a carbon sink during the last six decades. However, the contribution of different factors affecting the sink is not yet clear. In this study, historical inventory data were combined with land-use modelling data to reconstruct the develop...

The Summary for Policy Makers is a brief document based on information included in the “State of Europe’s Forests 2015”report. This document offers a comprehensive overview of European forests, their current status, trends and policy responses related to them, as well as an insight into sustainable forest management (SFM) in Europe. The State of E...

BeWater project (FP7 Science in Society) is based on a strong connection between science and society with a multidisciplinary approach, which balances environmental, political and socio-economic priorities to guide the development of relevant water management formulation options. BeWater aims to launch an innovative process of societal transition t...

#################################################################################### THIS DATA PACKAGE ACCOMPANIES: Verkerk PJ, Levers C, Kuemmerle T, Lindner M, Valbuena R, Verburg PH, Zudin S (2015) Mapping wood production in European forests. Forest Ecology and Management 357:228-238. doi:http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.foreco.2015.08.007 Please...

Wood production is an important forest use, impacting a range of other ecosystem services. However, information on the spatial patterns in wood production is limited and often available only for larger administrative units. In this study, we developed high-resolution wood production maps for European forests. We collected wood production statistics...

Assessments of ecosystem services ( ES ) and biodiversity (hereafter ecological parameters) provide a comprehensive view of the links between landscapes, ecosystem functioning and human well‐being. The investigation of consistent associations between ecological parameters, called bundles, and of their links to landscape composition and structure is...

Understanding patterns, dynamics, and drivers of land use is crucial for improving our ability to cope with sustainability challenges. The human appropriation of net primary production (HANPP) framework provides a set of integrated socio-ecological indicators that quantify how land use alters energy flows in ecosystems via land conversions and biom...

Forests provide many benefits to society and it is important to understand if, and how, policies affect the provisioning of ecosystem services. The objective of this dissertation was to analyze and evaluate impacts of intensified biomass production and biodiversity protection on ecosystem services provided by European forests. Article I assessed t...

Updated age-class data of the article "Reconstructed forest age structure in Europe 1950-2010" published in Forest Ecology and Management 286, 203–218.

Disturbances from wind, bark beetles and wildfires have increased in Europe's forests throughout the twentieth century 1. Climatic changes were identified as a key driver behind this increase 2 , yet how the expected continuation of climate change will aaect Europe's forest disturbance regime remains unresolved. Increasing disturbances could strong...

To develop viable strategies for intensifying the use of forest biomass and for increasing forest protection, impacts on ecosystem services need to be assessed. We investigated the biophysical and economic impacts of increased forest biomass production and biodiversity protection on forest ecosystem services. The European Forest Information SCENari...

Disturbances from wind, bark beetles, and wildfires have increased in Europe's forests throughout the 20(th) century (1). Climatic changes were identified as a main driver behind this increase (2), yet how the expected continuation of climate change will affect Europe's forest disturbance regime remains unresolved. Increasing disturbances could str...

Forest protection is one of the main measures to prevent loss of biological and landscape diversity. This study aimed to assess to what extent forests are currently protected and how felling restrictions affect the potential annual wood supply within 27 European Union member states, Norway, and Switzerland and to discuss trade-offs between intensif...

Future increases in land-based production will need to focus more on sustainably intensifying existing production systems. Unfortunately, our understanding of the global patterns of land use intensity is weak, partly because land use intensity is a complex, multidimensional term, and partly because we lack appropriate datasets to assess land use in...

European forests are seen as a clear example of vegetation rebound in the Northern Hemisphere; recovering in area and growing stock since the 1950s, after centuries of stock decline and deforestation. These regrowing forests have shown to be a persistent carbon sink, projected to continue for decades, however, there are early signs of saturation. F...

Forest age structure is an important factor for understanding the history of forests, their current functioning and their future development. It is, for instance, crucial information to be able to assess sustainable harvesting potentials. Furthermore, since the development of growing stock and increment, and thus the patterns of net carbon exchange...

Forests of the European Union ( EU ) have been intensively managed for decades, and they have formed a significant sink for carbon dioxide ( CO 2 ) from the atmosphere over the past 50 years. The reasons for this behavior are multiple, among them are: forest aging, area expansion, increasing plant productivity due to environmental changes of many k...

Globally, terrestrial ecosystems have absorbed about 30% of anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions over the period 2000–2007 and inter-hemispheric gradients indicate that a significant fraction of terrestrial carbon sequestration must be north of the Equator. We present a compilation of the CO2, CO, CH4 and N2O balances of Europe following a dual c...

Globally, terrestrial ecosystems have absorbed about 30% of anthropogenic emissions over the period 20007–2007 and inter-hemispheric gradients indicate that a significant fraction of terrestrial carbon sequestration must be north of the Equator. We present a compilation of the CO2, CO, CH4 and N2O balance of Europe following a dual constraint appro...

Deliverable D.7.1 Description of a coupled macroeconomic, multi-sector analysis at global scale with first simulation results and D.7.2 Description of the linked modelling system of sector models and multi-sector assessments are now available. These deliverables should be seen and read in together. D.7.1 describes results for 4 marker scenarios fro...

ISBN 978-951-38-7618-0

The demand of woody biomass both for industrial and energy use in the EU is estimated to increase markedly in the coming decades to satisfy the material and energy supply of bio-based economy. Moving towards more mechanized harvesting technology induces needs to invest in harvesting machinery, which may decrease the labour input/harvested volume...

Forests are important for providing wood for products and energy and the demand for wood is expected to increase. Our aim was to estimate the potential supply of woody biomass for all uses from the forests in the European Union (EU), while considering multiple environmental, technical and social constraints. The potential woody biomass supply was e...

Forests are considered an important resource to meet renewable energy targets. The intensified use of woody biomass could significantly affect forest biodiversity and other services provided by forests. This article presents results of a modeling study, which allows estimating impacts on the biodiversity indicator deadwood. This study suggests that...

The use of science-based tools for impact assessment has increasingly gained focus in addressing the complexity of interactions between environment, society, and economy. For integrated assessment of policies affecting land use, an analytical framework was developed. The aim of our work was to apply the analytical framework for specific scenario ca...