Forests cover almost one third of Europe's land area (193 million hectares, excluding the Russian Federation), representing 4% of the world's forests (FAO, 2007), and they provide a range of important goods and services In spite of their relatively small area, European forests account for 23% of global round wood removals; European removals have increased from 400 million m 3 in 1990 to nearly 500 million m 3 of timber in 2005 (FAO, 2007). The European forest sector accounts for about one quarter of the world's industrial output of forest products Removals from non-wood products are estimated to be more than half a million tones per year (FAO, 2007), with Europe being the main global producer for some of them, such as cork, pine kernels and chestnuts. In certain areas such as the Mediterranean region, the prof itability of non-wood products is considerably higher than that of wood products (Palah et al., 2009). In addition to merchantable goods, European forests provide a multitude of non-market services, including carbon storage, soil protection, climate regulation, water purification, biodiversity and recreational possibilities; in addition, in mountain terrain they have a very important function for preventing natural hazards such as floods, avalanches and rockfall, with significant downstream benefits.
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Bugmann et al. (2010) studied this question.