Forest plantations, according to Global Forest Resources Assessment (FRA 2000) definition, account for 5 percent of global forest cover in 2000 (FAO 2001b, Carle et al. 2002). There exist only a few estimates of the supply from forest plantations globally. On country level, in New Zealand almost all industrial roundwood (99 percent) is produced from forest plantations (FAO 1997a) as well as in South Africa (Pandey and Ball 1998), in Chile 84–95 percent (FAO 1999, Pandey and Ball 1998) and in Brazil 60–62 percent (Pandey and Ball 1998, FAO 1999) in the end of 1990s.
FAO (2000) presented the global outlook for future wood supply from forest plantations based on the data from 1995. The share of plantation area was estimated to be 3.5 percent of global forest area and that of industrial plantations even less. According to the study, 22 percent of industrial roundwood was produced from forest plantations in 1995 on an area of 103 million ha of industrial plantations. Different extrapolations of industrial roundwood consumptions and scenarios of potential industrial roundwood production from forest plantations were derived. Extreme values for 2050 were 19.7 and 64.0 percent for the proportion of plantation-produced industrial roundwood globally.
According to ABARE – Jaakko Pöyry (1999) industrial roundwood supply from plantations was estimated at 35 percent in 2000, 44 percent in 2020 and 46 percent in 2040. These scenarios were made on the assumption that industrial plantation area was 116 and total effective area 94 million ha in 1995.
Thomberlin and Buongiorno (2001) estimated that the production of industrial roundwood from industrial plantations compared to world total timber supply (not including Canada, Western Europe and former Soviet Bloc) would increase from 33 percent in 1995 to 42 percent in 2010. Plantation production estimates were from FAO (2000) and total roundwood production from FAO (1998).
From these figures it can easily be seen that:
• The importance of global forest plantation roundwood supply is higher than their share of forest area;
• The importance of planted forests in global roundwood supply will increase in the future;
• Countries have different strategies in planted forest development; and
• Outlook studies, databases and scenarios differ from each other.
According to FRA 2000 globally there exist 89 million ha of industrial, 48 million ha of non industrial and 49 million ha of forest plantations with purpose-unspecified. This more precise information about the purpose of forest plantations still leaves a large portion of plantations unspecified. It can be hypothesised that:
• Industrial planted forests may give even greater share in industrial roundwood supply globally on a smaller area than previously expected;
• Planted forests may have an increasing role in fuelwood supply; and
• Planted forests can serve multipurposes by production of industrial rounwood, fuelwood, non-wood forest products and provision of environmental, social and other services.
It is clear that more data is needed to fill the gaps that exist in planted forest information. This Planted Forests and Trees Working Paper describes the work that was done in FAO in supplementing and complementing the Global Forest Resources Assessment 2000 and previous assessments.
Forest plantations were defined in the Global Forest Resources Assessment (FRA 2000) (FAO 2001b, App. 2) as:
“Forest stands established by planting or/and seeding in the process of afforestation or reforestation. They are either:
• Of introduced species (all planted stands); or
• Intensively managed stands of indigenous species, which meet all the following criteria: one or two species at plantation, even age class, regular spacing.”
During the history of forest resources assessments the definition of plantations and planted forests has changed. In the first global plantation assessment in 1965 made by FAO the definition of man-made planted forests (FAO 1967) was:
“A forest crop raisen artificially, either by sowing or planting. This could be interpreted to include all forms of artificial regeneration but no natural regeneration.”
In the Tropical Forest Resources Assessment Project in 1980 (FAO 1981a) were defined as:
• “Forest stands established artificially by afforestation on land which previously did not carry forest;
• Forest stands established artificially by reforestation on land which carried out forest within the previous 50 years or within living memory and involving the replacement of the previous crop by a new and essentially different crop.”
Plantations did not include “stands established by artificial regeneration and essentially similar to those they were replacing”. Sorting was made between industrial (totally or partly for production of wood for industry) and non-industrial plantations (production of fuelwood, wood for charcoal, small wood for domestic consumption, non wood products or soil protection). Gross areas were derived for industrial and non-industrial, hardwoods and softwoods, and main planted species were listed. Five or ten-year age class planting rates were also presented.
In 1990 Forest Resources Assessment 1990 (FAO 1995a) plantation forests in developing countries referred to:
• “Forests established artificially by afforestation on lands which previously did not carry forest within living memory;
• Forests established artificially by reforestation of land which carried forest before and involving the replacement of the indigenous species by a new and essentially different species or genetic variety.”
Plantations were divided into industrial and non industrial similar to the 1980 assessment. The definition of plantations changed between 1980 and 1990 However, at the same time net areas were adopted instead of gross areas by using reduction factors. These terms were defined as (FAO 1995b):
• “Reported (or gross) planted areas is the planted area as stated from official institutions;
• ‘Reduction factor’ is the percentage of the total number of seedlings planted that have actually survived in a given area;
• Net plantation area is the actual existing plantation area, which has been established successfully, estimated from plantation surveys as inventory or survival percentage. Net area corresponds to the actual area of the stocked plantations excluding failed, harvested or doubly counted plantations and is calculated by applying the reduction factor to the reported areas.”
The concept of Net area = (Gross area)*0.7, was applied to all FAO forest plantation publications from Global Synthesis of Forest Resources Assessment 1990 (FAO 1995a) to the State of World Forests in 1999 (FAO 1999). Reduction factors were further adjusted by countries and regions (FAO 1995b, 2002c). A detailed description of different plantation definitions and publications can be found in FAO (2001a).
In FRA 2000 gross areas of forest plantations validated by countries were used instead of net areas previously used. The reason was perhaps the difficulty to find reliable reduction factors. Plantation areas were derived for every country that announced to have plantations according to the definition.
The concept of plantations has been further elaborated by FAO and other stakeholders like CIFOR, IPCC, IUFRO, UNEP and other experts (FAO 2002a, 2002b, Carle and Holmgren 2003.). In the Second expert meeting on harmonizing forest-related definitions for use of various stakeholders (FAO 2002b):
“the meeting considered the FRA definition of forest plantation to be precise and recommended it for consideration by other organizations, fora and processes.”
According to the meeting the following determinations were accepted:
Planted forests: non site-typical species, indigenous or exotic, planted or seeded
• Forest plantation: intensively managed, commercial production, even spacing, exotic or indigenous; and
• Extensively managed planted forest: protection, conservation.
Planted or seeded forests may be classified as semi-natural forests if they have natural characteristics like mixture of natural regeneration, diversification of age classes, layered canopies, enriched species diversity or random spacing. This is the case in many European countries and in Canada. FAO differentiates change processes in forest areas between natural forests and plantations. Dealing with plantations, afforestation is defined as “Establishment of forest plantations on land that, until then, was not classified as forest. It implies a transformation from non-forest to forest.” Reforestation means “Establishment of forest plantations on temporarily unstocked lands that are considered as forest” (FAO 2001b). Terms deforestation, regeneration, and expansion belong usually to natural forest area change processes. Many other terms like forest improvement, forest rehabilitation and forest restoration (see FAO 2002b) can be applied to natural and plantation forests.
In a following paper presented at the UNFF Inter-sessional Expert Meeting International Steering Group on "The Role of Planted Forests in Sustainable Forest Management" in March 2003 (Carle and Holmgren 2003) FAO strengthens and finally endorses the concept of Planted Forests defined as forests that have been established and are (intensively) managed for commercial production of wood and non-wood forest products, or to provide a specific environmental service (e.g. erosion control, landslide stabilization, windbreaks, etc.). Planted forests established for conservation, watershed or soil protection may be subject to little human intervention after their establishment. Changes may occur in purpose, degree of management intensity, time scale and potential reversibility (to other land uses). The Meeting considered the FRA definition of plantation forest to be precise and recommended it for consideration by other organizations, fora and processes. With the new broader concept of planted forests, forest plantations become a subset of planted forests.
Due to the problems on definitions currently, global forest plantation data is presented in FRA 2000 as gross areas and as estimated annual planting rate in 2000. The figures have been checked and validated by the respective countries. In developing countries the gross area distribution by genus is expressed separately in eight genera or other, wider classes.
This distribution by genus is valid for most countries in Africa, Asia, Oceania, North and Central America and South America. However in European countries, former CISs, Australia, Canada, Israel, Japan, New Zealand and Turkey all the forest plantations are classified as Unspecified. According to FRA, of developed countries, Austria, Canada, Czech Republic, Finland, Germany and Liechtenstein do not report forest plantations.
In FRA 2000 forest plantations are classified as industrial, non-industrial or unspecified. Whenever possible, within these classes the ownership of forest plantations is determined as public, private, other, or unspecified. A compilation of main results on forest plantation assessment is found in FAO (2001b) and in Carle et al. (2002).
According to FAO the present global knowledge the data about forest plantations are rather incomplete.
FAO recognizes that the following deficiencies or discrepancies in global statistics and information exist:
• Data on tree species distribution is incomplete. The largest individual class, Pinus spp., contains over 37 million ha (or 20 percent) globally.
• Most of the global forest plantation area is classified indefinitely; 29 percent as unspecified; 18 percent as other broadleaves and 11 percent as other coniferous. This means that globally 58 percent of forest plantation areas do not have species specification.
• In Europe 32 million ha of forest plantations are classified as unspecified according to tree species.
• In temperate and boreal zone industrialized countries no data about the ownership or purpose on country or sub-national level were reported into FRA database.
• The classification of the purpose of forest plantations is only tree-grade; industrial, non-industrial and unspecified. Industrial plantations are used, however, specifically for timber, pulpwood or biomass production and non-industrial plantations for fuelwood, environmental protection or other uses. The area of unspecified plantations by purpose amounts globally to over 49 million ha.
• The comparison between successive assessments is difficult because of different classifications in forest plantation areas (gross/net), different countries compilation and even different tree species selection as planted (e.g. rubberwood, Hevea brasiliensis).
• The differentiation between new planting and replanting has not been made in many country reports.
• The success of forest plantation establishment (survival rate) is usually not available for countries and tree species.
• The information on age class distribution of forest plantations is very weak or incomplete. In order to make reliable estimates for the supply from forest plantations, actual age classes are needed.
• Rotation lengths for forest planted species are rare or are given to species groups, often without purpose (timber/pulp/fuelwood).
• The growth of forest plantations is usually expressed with mean annual increment (MAI) over rotation length. MAIs are given either country wise or species group wise only. Growth between individual species among genera can, however, vary remarkably.
• There exist no data about forest plantation or planted forests by ecological zones. Even the data about forest plantations in sub-national units is very rare though management conditions may vary considerably within a country.
Planted Forests DataBase (PFDB) is meant to supplement already existing FAO data by providing users with additional planted forest information data (and references) not previously available. PFDB tries to provide detail information for growing parameters of the main planted forest species as MAI, rotation lengths, annual plantings. Also the information contained in PFDB will allow studies and trend analysis on gross areas for outlook studies and carbon sequestration.
