Enhanced LC-product for Fennoscandia

New forest classification scheme was developed to better represent the key forest structural variables, which have direct influence on vegetation-climate interactions, in different land models. Forest management affects the distribution of tree species and the age class of a forest, shaping its overall structure and functioning, and in turn, surface-atmosphere exchanges of mass, energy, and momentum. In order to attribute climate effects to anthropogenic activities like forest management, good accounts of forest structure are necessary. Here, using Fennoscandia as a case study, we make use of Fennoscandic National Forest Inventory (NFI) data to systematically classify forest cover into groups of similar aboveground forest structure. An enhanced forest classification scheme and related Look-Up Table (LUT) of key forest structural attributes (i.e. maximum growing season leaf area index (LAImax), basal area weighted mean tree height, tree crown length and total stem volume) was developed, and the classification was applied for Multi-Source NFI (MS-NFI) maps from Norway, Sweden and Finland. To provide a complete surface representation, our product was integrated with the European Space Agency Climate Change Intiative’s Land Cover (ESA CCI LC) map of present day land cover (v.2.0.7).