Finding the balance between open access to forest data while safeguarding the integrity of National Forest Inventory‐derived information

Climate Change is strongly jeopardizing the functioning of forest ecosystems and the services they provide for society. To understand the future trajectories of forest ecosystems, we have to assess the past and current state of our forests, and only with large long-term forest monitoring programs such as ICP Forests (George et al., 2022) and especially the National Forest Inventory (NFI) networks (Bontemps et al., 2022; Yu et al., 2022), this can be achieved. In addition, CO2 flux measurement networks such as the Integrated Carbon Observation System Research Infrastructure (ICOS, Heiskanen et al., 2022) and remote sensing technologies (Senf & Seidl, 2021) have advanced and provide highly complementary information on the response of forests to climate and climate extremes as well…