THE VOLUME OF WOOD FOREST RESOURCES IN THE EUROPEAN UNION COUNTRIES

Abstract

The contributions of forests to the well-being of humankind are extraordinarily vast and far-reaching. They are an important element in mitigating climate change. The aim of the paper is to determine the influence of particular factors on the diversity of the European Union countries in terms of the amount of wood forest resources compared with the country size. Two factors affecting the variable have been analysed in the paper: 1) the growing stock per 1 hectare of forest area and 2) the quotient of the forest area and the land area without inland water. Those two independent variables are directly proportional to the dependent variable, thus the higher the growing stock density and the higher the forest cover, the bigger the amount of wood forest resources of the analysed country. The causal analysis allowed to answer the question how the two factors affect the variable considered in the twenty eight countries, namely, what the direction and the strength of their influence are. The logarithmic method was used to carry out the causal analysis. The average results obtained for the entire European Union were compared with those received for each country separately and, on this basis, final conclusions were drawn. Data for 2005, 2010 and 2015 have been used for all needed calculations.

Keywords: forest cover, forest growing stock, the European Union, wood forest resources

Article DOI: http://doi.org/10.15544/RD.2017.035