What does forest mean?
Forest is the EUDR land-cover threshold for tree-covered land over 0.5 hectares with height and canopy criteria, excluding predominantly agricultural or urban land use.
forest
A regulatory term referring to land spanning more than 0,5 hectares with trees higher than 5 metres and a canopy cover of more than 10 %.
1 official sourcessingle_source
Official definitions by source
EUDR
Regulation (EU) 2023/1115 on deforestation-free products
land spanning more than 0,5 hectares with trees higher than 5 metres and a canopy cover of more than 10 %, or trees able to reach those thresholds in situ, excluding land that is predominantly under agricultural or urban land use;
Reference: Article 2, point 4
Key EUDR compliance trigger
EUDR applies to the listed commodities and derived products placed on or exported from the EU market from 30 December 2024 (large operators) and 30 June 2025 (SMEs), subject to the benchmarking system that classifies countries as low, standard, or high risk. The applicable obligation level depends on country risk classification as well as operator size.
Practical application
This term matters when geolocation, land-cover, and commodity-origin checks need a legal threshold for identifying forest land.
Minespider commentary
For Minespider, forest is a land-cover baseline term for deforestation and degradation analysis.
Common confusions
- Assuming the everyday meaning of forest is enough without checking the official source definition.
- Using forest as a loose generic label rather than the narrower meaning used in the source text.
- Assuming forest can be interpreted without understanding methodology, scope, or lifecycle context.