TY - JOUR A1 - Sabatini, Francesco Maria A1 - Bluhm, Hendrik A1 - Kun, Zoltan A1 - Aksenov, Dmitry A1 - Atauri, José A. A1 - Buchwald, Erik A1 - Burrascano, Sabina A1 - Cateau, Eugénie A1 - Diku, Abdulla A1 - Duarte, Inês Marques A1 - Fernández López, Ángel B. A1 - Garbarino, Matteo A1 - Grigoriadis, Nikolaos A1 - Horváth, Ferenc A1 - Keren, Srđan A1 - Kitenberga, Mara A1 - Kiš, Alen A1 - Kraut, Ann A1 - Ibisch, Pierre L. A1 - Larrieu, Laurent A1 - Lombardi, Fabio A1 - Matovic, Bratislav A1 - Melu, Radu Nicolae A1 - Meyer, Peter A1 - Midteng, Rein A1 - Mikac, Stjepan A1 - Mikoláš, Martin A1 - Mozgeris, Gintautas A1 - Panayotov, Momchil A1 - Pisek, Rok A1 - Nunes, Leónia A1 - Ruete, Alejandro A1 - Schickhofer, Matthias A1 - Simovski, Bojan A1 - Stillhard, Jonas A1 - Stojanovic, Dejan A1 - Szwagrzyk, Jerzy A1 - Tikkanen, Olli-Pekka A1 - Toromani, Elvin A1 - Volosyanchuk, Roman A1 - Vrška, Tomáš A1 - Waldherr, Marcus A1 - Yermokhin, Maxim A1 - Zlatanov, Tzvetan A1 - Zagidullina, Asiya A1 - Kuemmerle, Tobias T1 - European primary forest database v2.0 JF - Scientific Data N2 - Primary forests, defined here as forests where the signs of human impacts, if any, are strongly blurred due to decades without forest management, are scarce in Europe and continue to disappear. Despite these losses, we know little about where these forests occur. Here, we present a comprehensive geodatabase and map of Europe’s known primary forests. Our geodatabase harmonizes 48 different, mostly field-based datasets of primary forests, and contains 18,411 individual patches (41.1 Mha) spread across 33 countries. When available, we provide information on each patch (name, location, naturalness, extent and dominant tree species) and the surrounding landscape (biogeographical regions, protection status, potential natural vegetation, current forest extent). Using Landsat satellite-image time series (1985–2018) we checked each patch for possible disturbance events since primary forests were identified, resulting in 94% of patches free of significant disturbances in the last 30 years. Although knowledge gaps remain, ours is the most comprehensive dataset on primary forests in Europe, and will be useful for ecological studies, and conservation planning to safeguard these unique forests. KW - Biodiversity KW - Conservation biology KW - Forest ecology Y1 - 2021 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:kobv:eb1-opus-4173 SN - 2052-4463 VL - 8 PB - Nature Publishing Group UK ER -