Europe’s bioeconomy is expected to foster economic growth and to tackle significant societal challenges with less harmful environmental effects through innovative, sustainable and inclusive use of European forest resources. Increasing demand for biomass and other ecosystem goods and services calls for changes in forest-related policies at different levels and across different sectors.

Accordingly, the recent Forest Strategy provides clear signals towards the need for harmonised information for mapping and assessing the dynamic state of forest ecosystems and their services. Building upon scientific advances in COST E4, 39, 43, USEWOOD, FORSYS, ORCHESTRA; the networks ENFIN, EFFIS, SOSIN; the FP7 EUFODOS, S2BIOM, INTEGRAL, SIMWOOD, FIRE PARADOX the project DIABOLO aims to:

• strengthen the methodological framework towards more accurate, harmonised and timely forest information, e.g. on growing stock and stock changes, biomass, carbon, non-wood forest products (NWFP);

• enable the analysis of sustainable biomass supply derived from multipurpose and multisource national forest inventories; and facilitate near real-time forest disturbance monitoring, e.g. on forest fires, storm, drought, insect outbreaks;

• support EU policy processes, international reporting obligations, forest administration and forest planning entities with new methodologies and EU-wide consistent forest information;

• make innovative use of existing field-collected data and EC space-based applications of Earth Observation (EO) and satellite positioning systems with reference to INSPIRE and GEOSS, and global monitoring systems such as REDD+, FLEGT and UNFF.

To deliver high impact, beyond state-of-the-art work within the ecological and socio-economic diversity in Europe, the trans-disciplinary DIABOLO involves experts in quantitative modelling, policy science and National Forest Inventories (NFIs), from 33 Partners (CEABN InBIO – Institute of Agronomy is a partner) of 26 European countries, and a total budget of 5 million EUR committed to provide new methodologies and information for various end-uses, including European Forest Data Center (EFDAC) and Forest Information System for Europe (FISE) at Joint Research Centre (JRC), Global Biosphere Management Model (GLOBIOM) at International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA) and work at FAO/UNECE.

DIABOLO is one of the pioneer research projects under the Horizon 2020 Societal Challenges programme. DIABOLO will result in a more accurate, harmonised and timely information on forest resources through the collaborative network of European National Forest Inventories (ENFIN). The results will support the development of EU policies and international processes relying on consistent forest information.

DIABOLO Leaflet [Download] and DIABOLO Poster [Download]