Recent increase in European forest harvests as based on area estimates (Ceccherini et al. 2020a) not confirmed in the French case

Abstract

• Key message: A recent paper by Ceccherini et al.(2020a) reported an abrupt increase of 30% in the French harvested forest area in 2016–2018 compared to 2004–2015. A re-analysis of their data rather led us to conclude that, when accounting for the singular effect of storm Klaus, the rate of change in harvested area depended on the change year used to separate the two periods to compare. Moreover, the comparison with data on harvested volumes from different sources brought contrasted results depending on the source. Therefore, it cannot be concluded that wood harvest increased in France in 2016–2018 compared to 2004–2015. The discrepancy between Ceccherini et al.’s data and other data on harvested volumes points out the difficulty of reconciling different approaches to estimate wood harvest at a country level.