Forest planning across Europe: the spatial scale, tools, and inter-sectoral integration in land-use planning

New approaches to forest planning are needed to support the transition of European forests to sustainable management. The aim of this study is to review forest planning systems already in place throughout Europe by exploring a set of case-study countries reflecting the main silvicultural schools of Western Europe, including Belgium, Finland, France, Italy, Portugal, and Slovenia. A literature review and case-study data were used to assess the scale factors (vertical logic) as well as the relationships between forest planning and other environmental6 land-use planning sectors (horizontal logic). The influence of EU policy on the development of forest planning is also discussed. As assessed u…