Forest Inventory of the Austrian Research Centre for Forests (BFW)

The Forest Inventory has been conducted for several decades. For this purpose, expert teams gather information on forests on around 11,000 sample plots. The best available modern technologies, like satellite and digital aerial images, are used. The organisational and technical implementation is handled by BFW. The latest results were presented in July 2022.

The forest area continues to grow

Austria’s forest area has further increased and now covers over four million hectares, or 47.9 percent, of Austria's national territory. Over the past decade, the forest area has increased by six hectares every day. The forest area has grown above all in the mountainous regions in the west of Austria. Formerly agriculturally utilised areas are being abandoned there. They are either afforested or forests grow naturally. Climate change leads to a rise in the timberline, but this is happening very slowly.

The Federal Province with the largest share of woodland is Styria with 62 percent, followed by Carinthia (61 percent), Salzburg (52 percent) and Upper Austria (42 percent).

Utilisation and stock

One criterion of sustainable forest management is not to remove more trees from the forest than will regrow. Presently, only 89 percent of the increment in Austrian forests are harvested. To ensure that this remains the case, sustainable active forest management is laid down in the Austrian Forestry Act. Increased utilisation contributes to the goals of the bioeconomy and the dependence on fossil and other non-renewable resources and materials can be reduced. The growing stock continues to increase and has reached a peak level of 1.2 billion cubic metres in the total forest (1.18 billion cubic metres over bark in the forests in yield). Almost half of the growing stock is located in particularly thick tree trunks with a diameter of over 40 centimeter.

Challenges due to browsing by wildlife

Cloven-hoofed game such as roe deer and stags are part of the forest ecosystem and also feed on young forest trees. However, the populations of cloven-hoofed game has been steadily increasing for many decades and is currently too high to allow a healthy development of forest regeneration. On 420,000 hectares of Austria’s forest land the existing regeneration is affected by browsing. A reduction to half of this area is required in the next few years in order to reverse the trend. This regeneration deficit is a major problem, especially in protective forests. The Austrian Forest and Hunting Dialogue is committed to solving this problem through joint efforts by both the hunting and forestry sector.

Damage due to bark-peeling has remained at a high level as well. It has increased significantly in protective forests and impairs their protective effect. In the rest of the forest, there has been a slight decrease in bark-peeling damage.

More diversity

The trend towards more broadleaved trees clearly continues, which improves biodiversity and climate-fitness. Pure coniferous stands have decreased by 6 percent over the past decade and mixed broadleaved stands have increased by the same percentage. Pure broadleaved stands have increased significantly (8 percent) as well.

A mixture of broadleaved and coniferous species is the best way to achieve a climate-fit forest. The Austrian Research Centre for Forests, BFW, has developed a new, innovative advisory tool for designing climate-fit forests: the tree species traffic light. The traffic light system informs about the suitability of tree species for future forests in different climate scenarios in different regions. In the face of climate change and its impact - including on forests - the biggest lever for climate protection is the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions. Without CO² reduction, forests cannot maintain their positive effect in the fight against climate change indefinitely.

The habitat for animals and organisms in forests has also been strengthened, thus further improving biodiversity. One indicator of this is deadwood, which has increased by 18 percent. While decomposition is gradually progressing, deadwood serves numerous animals and plants as an ideal nesting, development, food or overwintering habitat.