Assessing the resources and mitigation potential of European forests

National and international carbon reporting systems require information on forest carbon stocks. This information can be derived from national forest inventory data and remote sensing. Here we present the conceptual challenges in assessing forest resources across Europe by combining MODIS satellite versus terrestrial driven NPP estimates calculated from 13 national forest inventory (NFI) data covering 200.000 sampling plots. The results suggest that MODIS NPP predictions using local daily climate data and addressing stand desnsity effects, provide realistic forest productivity estimates. Ignoring these effects leads to an overestimation in the estimated carbon storage of European forests derived from satellite data.