This publication is categorised as a CSO Frontier Series Output. Particular care must be taken when interpreting the statistics in this release as it may use new methods which are under development and/or data sources which may be incomplete, for example new administrative data sources.
The Forests and Woodlands 2012-2022 Frontier Series release was published on 20 March 2024. Data within the publication were revised on 10 September 2024. These data revisions were primarily due to revised data received from Coillte on the area of forests and woodlands, some methodological improvements, and the availability of a revised and updated National Inventory Report from the Environmental Protection Agency, which was used to compile figures for the Global Climate Regulation service. All content relating to the Forests and Woodlands 2012-2022 Frontier Series release now reflects the new and revised data. Details as to the extent of these revisions can be found in the Information Note on Revisions to Forests and Woodlands 2012-2022.
Forests & Woodlands covered almost 770,000 hectares in 2021, up more than 5% (over 41,000 hectares) in the 10 years since 2012.
While the area of Coniferous forests rose by nearly 2% between 2012 and 2021, the area of Broadleaved forests increased by almost 17%, and the area of Mixed forests was up by 16%.
The counties with the lowest percentage coverage of Forests & Woodlands in 2021 were Meath (3.7%), Dublin (4%), and Louth (4.2%).
Wicklow was the county with the highest percentage coverage of Forests & Woodlands in 2021 (more than 20%), followed by Leitrim with more than 17% of coverage.
Deadwood, a natural component of Forests & Woodlands and an important resource for biodiversity, has shown an upward trend, growing from 10.9m3/ha in 2012 to 14.1m3/ha in 2022.
The total carbon stored in Forests & Woodlands in 2022 was 323 million tonnes, up nearly 13% on 2012.
The net carbon sequestered by Forests & Woodlands in 2022 was 512,335 tonnes, which was over 5% of the carbon in our CO2 emissions in that year.
The extent accounts for Ireland's forest and woodland ecosystems were compiled using administrative data from the Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine (DAFM) and Coillte, and survey data from the National Parks and Wildlife Service (NPWS). The ecosystem type Forests & Woodlands was further broken down based on these data, providing the extent of Broadleaved, Coniferous, Mixed, and Transitional forests.
The condition accounts were compiled using data from the National Forest Inventory for Deadwood, and data from the Copernicus Land Monitoring Service for Tree Cover Density.
The services accounts were compiled using data from the National Forest Inventory and the Forest Service, and the Environmental Protection Agency's National Inventory Report for 2024.
This publication is categorised as a CSO Frontier Series Output. For further details about the methodologies applied, refer to the Background Notes. For more information on the economic value of forests, see the CSO's Forestry statistics. To find out more about the extent accounts at a national level, visit Ecosystem Extent Accounts 2000-2018.
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Statistician's Comment
The Central Statistics Office (CSO) has today (10 September 2024) published Ecosystem Accounts - Forests & Woodlands 2012-2022.
Commenting on the release, Nova Sharkey, Statistician in the Ecosystem Accounts Division, said: "Published as part of the CSO Frontier Series, this release is the first time the CSO has produced a full set of ecosystem accounts for one of Ireland's ecosystems. We have combined data from a range of sources to produce accounts for the extent and condition of our forest and woodland ecosystems, and some of the ecosystem services they provide.
Extent
Forests & Woodlands covered almost 770,000 hectares in 2021. Between 2012 and 2021, the area covered by Forests & Woodlands grew by more than 5% (over 41,000 hectares). Not all categories of Forests & Woodlands increased in area at the same rate; while the area of Coniferous forests went up by almost 2% between 2012 and 2021, the area of Broadleaved forests rose by nearly 17%, and the area of Mixed forests grew by 16%.
The counties with the lowest percentage coverage of Forests and Woodlands in 2021 were Meath (3.7%), Dublin (4%), and Louth (4.2%). Wicklow was the county with the highest percentage coverage of Forests & Woodlands in 2021 (more than 20%), while Leitrim had the next highest coverage at more than 17% of the county.
Condition
Deadwood, a natural component of Forests & Woodlands, and an important resource for biodiversity, has shown an upward trend, growing from 10.9m3/ha in 2012 to 14.1m3/ha in 2022.
Tree Cover Density has also shown an increasing trend, going from almost 52% in 2012 to nearly 59% in 2018. However, we will need more years of data to confirm this trend due to changes in the data used to calculate this.
Services
The Wood provision service provided by Forests & Woodlands is measured as the net annual increment or growth in timber volume in the forests categorised as 'Forest Available for Wood Supply' (FAWS). The total net annual increment in 2022 was 9.984 million m3, of which 9.064 million m3 was in FAWS.
The Global climate regulation service is reported as the stock of carbon in an ecosystem, and the annual net sequestration of carbon. The total carbon stored in Forests & Woodlands in 2022 was 323 million tonnes, up almost 13% on 2012. The net carbon sequestered annually by Forests & Woodlands totalled more than 9.2 million tonnes between 2012 and 2022. Net carbon sequestration has decreased from more than a million tonnes in 2012 to 512,335 tonnes in 2022. The net carbon sequestered by Forests & Woodlands in 2022 was more than 5% of the carbon in Ireland's CO2 emissions in that year (see Environmental Accounts Air Emissions 2022). The carbon stored in Harvested Wood Products each year averaged more than 218 thousand tonnes."