With the Virtual Forest, the era of the proverbial “you can’t see the wood for the trees” will soon be a thing of the past for the state of North Rhine-Westphalia’s forestry sector. To this end a real-life forest inventory as a virtual ecosystem and a virtual production site is provided as a model by the Virtual Forest, which, on this basis, makes available innovative information, planning and orientation groundwork not only for the forestry sector, but also for instance for the benefit of the recreation of citizens and for tourism. These tools and technology have the objective to operate a sustainable and multifunctional forestry sector with reduced manpower, which provides wood-consuming sectors with the necessary raw materials. With this goal the Virtual Forest is the focal point of extensive measures for the improvement of the “forest & timber” sector – especially taking into account the structural weaknesses of small, privately-owned forests present. Topography, soil, paths, land development, planting etc. are, for this purpose, included in the virtual model. A tree database of the Virtual Forest gives every tree in North Rhine-Westphalia its own digital identity (describing geo-coordinates, height, diameter of the crown, diameter at breast height (DBH) etc.). For further information go to the Virtual Forest project website.