ABSTRACT
This chapter deals with the air pollution conditions in Europe and their possible effects on the future development of the forest resources. The European forest resources are important in many ways, with forest decline attributed to air pollution becoming a major concern of the European society since the early 1980s. Forest decline attributed to air pollutants can be found in each country of Europe, although the extent of this decline differs from region to region. The most important factor in designing a consistent, dynamic, timber-assess- ment model for all of Europe is the availability of forest-resources data. The model must represent forest growth in a proper way, react to changes in management programs, react to changes in the environment, and cope with changes in the landbase allocated to forest production. In the diameter-distribution model, the basic entity on which the description of the forest is based is the individual tree instead of the forest area.
