European forests: an ecological overview

Ecosystems may be classified into a variety of groups or zones according to their homogeneity. An Ecological Zone may be defined as an area with broad yet relatively homogeneous natural vegetation formations that are similar, although not necessarily identical. Several key aspects of forest resources are influenced at the global and continental scale by the ecological zone where a given forest or woodland grows10-17. Even at the regional and country scale, the distribution of environmental and ecological zones may contribute to the understanding of core differences in local forest ecosystems. For its Global Forest Resources Assessment, the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) produced a global ecological zoning classification. The FAO zoning is exploited by a rich variety of applications. In this chapter, the classification of FAO is summarised and complemented by a qualitative analysis of the secondary ecozone components which may coexist in a given European area as subordinate constituents of the local forest ecosystems. These components have been derived by means of a robust fuzzy analysis of climatic similarity

DE RIGO Daniele;  DURRANT Tracy;  CAUDULLO Giovanni;  BARREDO CANO Jose Ignacio; 

2016-09-28

Publication Office of the European Union

JRC103182

978-92-79-52833-0,   

http://forest.jrc.ec.europa.eu/media/atlas/European_forests_an_ecological_overview.pdf,    https://publications.jrc.ec.europa.eu/repository/handle/JRC103182,