Wood density variation in European forest species: drivers and implications for multiscale biomass and carbon assessment in France

Cuny, Henri; Bontemps, Jean-Daniel; Besic, Nikola; Colin, Antoine; Hertzog, Lionel; Le Squin, Amaël; Marchand, William; Vega, Cédric; Leban, Jean-Michel

doi:10.5194/bg-23-2365-2026

Articles | Volume 23, issue 7

https://doi.org/10.5194/bg-23-2365-2026

© Author(s) 2026. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

https://doi.org/10.5194/bg-23-2365-2026

© Author(s) 2026. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

Articles | Volume 23, issue 7

Research article

|

10 Apr 2026

Research article |

| 10 Apr 2026

Wood density variation in European forest species: drivers and implications for multiscale biomass and carbon assessment in France

Henri Cuny, Jean-Daniel Bontemps, Nikola Besic, Antoine Colin, Lionel Hertzog, Amaël Le Squin, William Marchand, Cédric Vega, and Jean-Michel Leban

Supplement

https://doi.org/10.5194/bg-23-2365-2026-supplement

Data sets

XyloDensMap: a georeferenced dataset for the wood density of 110000 trees from 156 European species in France H. Cuny et al. https://doi.org/10.6084/m9.figshare.c.7515396

Dataset and R scripts for 'Wood density variation in European forest species: drivers and implications for multiscale biomass and carbon assessment in France' H. Cuny et al. https://doi.org/10.6084/m9.figshare.c.8396739

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Short summary

We analysed wood density variation in mainland France using 110,000 records from 156 tree species. Models calibrated for 44 species revealed species identity as the dominant driver, followed by tree size and temperature. While neglecting wood density variation had little impact on forest biomass estimates nationally, it caused significant bias at finer scales, highlighting the need to account for wood density variation in forest biomass and carbon assessments.