Forest ecosystems summary assessment

Area in forest ecosystems

Population in forest ecosystems

Besides providing food, timber, fuelwood, drinking and irrigation water, fodder, nontimber products, and genetic resources, forest ecosystems remove air pollutants and emit oxygen, cycle nutrients, provide human and wildlife habitat, maintain watershed functions and biodiversity, sequester atmospheric carbon, provide employment, moderate weather extremes and impacts, generate soil, provide recreation, and contribute aesthetic beauty.


Fiber production	Water quality and quantity	Biodiversity	Carbon storage	Woodfuel production

Scorecard key

Condition assesses the current output and quality of the ecosystem good or service compared with output and quality of 20-30 years ago.

Excellent	Good	Fair	Poor	Bad	Not assessed

Changing capacity assesses the underlying biological ability of the ecosystem to continue to provide the good or service.

Increasing	Mixed	Decreasing	Unknown

Scores are expert judgments about each ecosystem good or service over time, without regard to changes in other ecosystems. Scores estimate the predominant global condition or capacity by balancing the relative strength and reliabilityof the various indicators described in the notes on data quality. When regional findings diverge, in the absence of global quality, weight is given to better-quality data, larger geographic coverage, and longer time series. Pronounced differences in global trends are scored as “mixed” if a net value cannot be determined. Serious inadequacy of current data is scored as “unknown.”