European Forestry Pulse #113 🌲

Hello,

On Thursday I wrote that for forty years we counted forest loss in hectares.

Within hours, several senior forest scientists replied. Politely, and in public.

They were right. I was wrong. The correction is today's lead, because it is more useful than the original story.

Here's what's moving European forestry this week:

Thursday's issue covered a study from the Technical University of Munich. It measured biomass lost in forest disturbances across Europe.

The study is sound. My framing was not.

I wrote that we had counted forest in hectares for forty years. That sentence referred to the satellite record, which starts around 1985.

I never said so. As written, it suggests Europe had no measurement of forest volume before satellites.

Europe had far better than that.

Sweden, Finland and Norway began national forest inventories in the 1920s. Trial surveys started as early as 1914.

These are not estimates from the air. They are ground crews walking fixed sample plots.

They measure diameter. They measure height. They core trees and count annual rings. They record soil.

The same plots get revisited on a cycle, decade after decade. That is roughly a century of statistically designed data on standing volume, growth and loss.

No satellite has ever produced anything like it.

Here is the part worth keeping.

Gross loss and net change are different measurements.

The Munich study measures biomass removed in disturbance events. Harvest, storm, beetle, fire. That is a gross figure. It does not subtract growth.

National forest inventories measure the net change in standing volume. Everything lost, minus everything grown.

Both can rise at the same time. Disturbance losses can get more severe while total standing volume still increases.

That is not a contradiction. It is two instruments answering two questions.

Thursday's issue did not make that clear. Today's does.

There is a second half to this, and it is new.

A team at the University of Maryland led by Lei Ma and George Hurtt has published in Nature Ecology & Evolution.

They tested what optical satellites can and cannot see. The answer is uncomfortable.

Passive optical sensors saturate once a forest canopy passes roughly 16 metres. After that the picture stops changing. Wood added underneath does not show up.

The team combined satellites, repeat airborne lidar, vegetation models and ground plot inventories across the United States.

Mature US forests are gaining about 102 million tonnes of carbon a year that satellite-derived estimates read as close to flat.

Lidar, which measures structure instead of colour, agrees with the ground crews.

I saw this in Boreal Tech Brief. Credit where it is due.

Satellites are very good at seeing a disturbance. A stand disappears and the pixel changes.

Satellites are poor at seeing slow growth under a closed canopy. Nothing visible changes.

So a satellite-only view of a forest is structurally tilted. It captures the losses sharply and the gains faintly.

That is not a flaw in anyone's study. Every paper states its own scope. It is a flaw in how the numbers travel afterwards.

I was part of that chain on Thursday.

If you own forest: your inventory data is worth more than you think. It measures net change. Satellite headlines usually do not.

If you value forest assets: ask which number the model uses. Gross disturbance loss and net volume change produce very different valuations.

If you speak for the sector: this is the strongest answer you have. European forest volume has grown across a century of measurement, through the period Europe supplied its own timber and paper. That comes from ground data, not from a press release.

If you buy or sell carbon: instrument choice is now a due diligence question. Ask what the baseline was measured with, and whether it can see growth at all.

Europe's forests are measured better than almost anywhere on earth. On Thursday I told that story backwards. Thank you to the readers who said so. Sources: Ma, L., Hurtt, G. et al., Nature Ecology & Evolution, 2026, DOI 10.1038/s41559-026-03151-w | Boreal Tech Brief #059 | EFP #112 — the original issue

On 20 July, the US President issued three proclamations under Section 338 of the Tariff Act of 1930.

They impose 50% tariffs on a list of Canadian goods. The stated reason concerns motor vehicles, alcohol and dairy.

The lists go much wider than that. Wood, paper and value-added wood products are on them.

Plywood and engineered wood panels are covered. So are furniture categories, veneer, and paper products.

The scheduled date is 19 August 2026. That is tomorrow, unless Washington modifies or delays it first.

Now the detail almost nobody has picked up.

Softwood lumber and logs are not in the new measure. That is not because they escaped.

It is because they are already covered by Section 232, at 10% since October 2025. Goods under Section 232 are excluded from Section 338.

So the commodity is tariffed once. The value-added product is now tariffed at fifty.

Why it matters: In EFP #112 we showed Canada's export diversification covering about 4% of the volume the US stopped taking. That was raw lumber. This measure hits the processed end of the same industry.

The takeaway: Canadian plywood, panels and furniture need somewhere else to go. Europe is a plausible destination. If you sell any of those into European markets, watch import volumes over the next two quarters. The pressure arrives as competition, not as headlines. Source: Government of Canada — Softwood lumber FAQ

On 17 August, Metsä Group opened an unusual campaign for its owner-members.

Trades concluded between 17 August and 15 October 2026 get a one-year price guarantee on pulpwood.

The structure is one-sided in the seller's favour. If pulpwood prices rise before the end of September 2027, sellers receive a retroactive top-up payment in December 2027.

If prices fall, the original payment is not reduced.

Metsä is also paying a €1 per cubic metre bonus on both logs and pulpwood during the campaign, on top of existing member bonuses.

Juho Rantala, SVP Wood Trade and Forest Services, said demand for wood is high and Finnish wood prices are at a very good level for forest owners compared with the longer-term picture.

Why it matters: A cooperative representing roughly 90,000 forest owners does not underwrite one-sided downside protection for fun. It does it to secure supply. That is a demand signal with money behind it.

The takeaway: If you sell wood in Finland, read the campaign terms before mid-October. If you sell anywhere else, note the mechanism. A guarantee that only pays upward is a buyer telling you what it expects prices to do. Source: Metsä Group press release, 17 August 2026

Southwest France is counting what the summer fires left standing.

In Gironde, between 39,000 and 41,000 hectares of maritime pine were affected. Le Monde puts that at 3.5 million m³ of wood.

Hold that number against normal. It is close to two-thirds of the forest region's typical annual production.

A further 210,000 m³ was lost in the Biscarrosse fire in Landes.

None of it has moved yet. Foresters are still barred from the centre of burned plots. Hot ground and smouldering material mean a vehicle can restart the fire.

Access may stay restricted until autumn rain lets authorities declare the fire out.

Then the clock starts. Burned trees have to come down before bark beetles finish the job.

Condition decides the market. The worst material goes to heating pellets. Less damaged wood goes to pallets, paper, plywood panels and battens.

Reported prices run from about €10 to more than €50 per m³, depending on condition and end use.

Why it matters: In EFP #109 we said burn area converts into salvage volume, insurance claims and valuation adjustments across roughly eighteen months. This is that, with numbers attached.

The takeaway: A large volume of discounted pine is queued behind a gate that opens with the autumn rain. It cannot wait once it opens, because beetles and blue stain are on a timetable. If you sell pine pulpwood, pallet or panel-grade material into western Europe, do not price your autumn contracts as though this wood does not exist. And note the spread: €10 and €50 are the same species from the same fire. Grading is where the money is. Source: Lesprom Network — Southwest France timber sector faces 3.5 million m³ of fire-damaged pine

Ask one question about every forest number you see this month. Two minutes each.

The question is: gross or net?

Try it on things you already have.

Then take it outside your own files. Next time a headline gives you a forest loss number, find out which one it is.

Most reporting will not tell you. That is precisely why the question is worth asking.

If a number cannot answer gross or net, it cannot be used in a valuation. It can only be used in an argument.

I got a fact wrong in public on Thursday. Three scientists said so within hours.

There is a right way to handle that, and several wrong ones.

Defending it would have cost more than the error did.

The Playbook covers the corrections you will eventually have to make.

"Gross or net?" is a term-sheet question, not a forestry question.

Every forest valuation rests on definitions. Increment, removal, standing volume, sustainable yield. Change the definition and you change the price, without changing a single tree.

I wrote the Forest-Investment Dictionary with Danish forest economist Anders Tærø Nielsen. It has 151 pages, 11 chapters, 14 printable tools, and 3 calculators. Investors learn to read a forest. Foresters learn to read a term sheet.

When the market turns, the people who can read the numbers make the better calls. The price is €99. Get yours below.

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Until Thursday!

Wish you all the best: Peter

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