Last year, ForestPaths partners from the Technical University of Munich delivered an update of the European Forest Disturbance Atlas (EFDA) as part of their work on the project. Significantly, this dataset thus made the full transition to an open-source platform whose new cause-attribution workflow can be actualised with the latest developments as often as needed. Furthermore, multiple disturbances per series can now be detected at the same time throughout the EFDA’s extended review timespan between 1985 and 2023.

In the time since its unveiling, the Atlas has already proven itself a valuable tool for forestry-related scientific studies, with around 10,000 public downloads from the Zenodo repository alone. For instance, projects such as the European Space Agency’s RECCAP-2 Climate Space and GLANCE have been employing the updated output as part of their Earth observation activities. Two recent publications have also benefited from the update while conducting new research, with several more in preparation:

• “Flush to Crush: The Paradox of Favourable Springs Leading to Tree Mortality” (Schneider et al., 2025);

• “Mapping forest management regimes in Europe” (Scherpenhuijzen et al., 2025).

You can find out more about the EFDA and its update here. A broader outlook on ForestPaths activities surrounding mapping is laid out on this page.