The Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences has got seven million SEK (circa 700,000 €) by the EU for further co-ordinating forest monitoring in Europe. Monitoring of Europe's forests needs to be co-ordinated in order to fulfil the requirements of various international agreements. Two big networks, ICP Forest and ENFIN have been created for the purpose of improving co-operation between the inventory programs of the European countries. Now the University has got money from the EU for a new project for the purpose of trying to unite the two networks.
Mr Sören Wulff, who is project manager in the University, says that forest monitoring can be made much more efficient and cheaper by co-ordinating inventories and by avoiding double work. The EU money will be used for investigating how the co-operation between ICP Forest and ENFIN can be improved. 
The name of the project is FutMon (Further Development and Implementation of an EU-level Forest Monitoring System) and it will start in 2009. The project is financed by the EU environment program LIFE+ and it will go on for two years. LIFE+ also finances other countries' work on FutMon.