Data from: Mapping wood production in European forests

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 for 29
European countries from 2000 to 2010, as well as comprehensive sets of
biophysical and socioeconomic location factors. We used regression
analyses to produce maps indicating the harvest likelihood on a 1 × 1 km2
grid. These likelihood maps were validated using national forest inventory
plot data. We then disaggregated wood production statistics from larger
administrative units to the grid level using the harvest likelihood as
weights. We verified the resulting wood production maps by correlating
predicted and observed wood production at the level of smaller
administrative units not used for generating the wood production maps. We
conclude that (i) productivity, tree species composition and terrain
ruggedness are the most important location factors that determine the
spatial patterns of wood production at the pan-European scale and that
(ii) incorporating these location factors substantially improves the
results of disaggregating wood production statistics compared to a
disaggregation based on forest cover only. Our wood production maps give
insight into forest ecosystem service provisioning and can be used to
improve the assessment of potentials and costs of woody biomass supply.