Monitoring Trees Outside Forests in the EU

Trees Outside Forests (agroforestry and settlement forestry) are greatly under-reported and should be included in the new EU “Framework for Forest Monitoring” using harmonised methodologies based on Copernicus, LUCAS and LPIS datasets.  LULUCF/AFOLU reporting by Member States of the GHG emissions from cropland, grassland and settlements should use detailed information on tree cover and employ IPCC Tier3 and Approach 3 methods, rather than the Tier 1 methods still used by some MS. Countries should use “wall to wall” identification of parcels, allowing links to farm-scale modelling of emissions (e.g. using LPIS datasets).  This should also apply to countries which fund forestry outside the CAP (e.g. IR, NL, FI,SE,LU), since these do not provide evidence for indicators in the  current Performance, Monitoring and Evaluation Framework.