Forest functions and space: a geohistorical perspective of European forests

The history of man has been linked to the history of wood since prehistoric times and because the forest is the main place where this resource is available, forest spaces are also directly linked to the evolution of human society. The objective of this paper is to analyze the historical evolution of the functions assigned by humans to forests, highlighting how they affect the production of space from a diachronic perspective. Focusing our attention on some European countries, we highlight that although historically, wood production was the most important function provided by wooded lands, other functions were also attributed to forests. The awareness of these functions emerged when an overexploitation of forest resources produced a lack of a specific service. When these services corresponded to a societal demand, they produced welfare benefits for the society, which were recognized as forest functions. Thus even the functions evolved in time according to the evolution of societal needs. Evaluating when and how each societal demand emerged, and consequently the moment each function was recognized, is an essential prerequisite even for a more accurate interpretation of current forest management practices. Not only is the temporal dimension of forest functions relevant, so is the spatial scale, which may differ considerably between them, ranging from the specific forest area and its owner for the productive function; to the catchment area and its inhabitants for the protective function; to a potentially larger area for the cultural and biodiversity function; and to the entire globe for the carbon-retention function. The strict, and sometimes competing, interactions between these functions may also be recognized in the production of space, which evolved in time according to the evolution of the corresponding societal needs. A forest parcel assigned to a productive function is a material space, marked in the field by colored signs, but it may also be virtually represented by a forest model or be part of some protected area. But this picture would change if, instead of looking at the present, we consider the past and the different sensations and representations concerned with forests. These complex interactions, between different functions and spatial dimensions, justify the need to balance a segregative management system with a wider, multifunctional integrated approach. What has emerged from our study is that to reach this difficult equilibrium, it is useful to consider the production processes of these forest spaces. Through this analytical approach, we can understand the interactions occurring over time between the evolution of the demands expressed by society and the main changes occurred on the forest landscape

Brief on forestry biomass production

This brief on forestry biomass production is one out of a series of Bioeconomy Knowledge Centre briefs which intend to provide independent evidence for EU policy in this field. The following are the key results: 1. The land area covered by forests in the EU has been expanding at an average rate of 0.26% or 0.4 million hectares (Mha) per year from 2000 to 2015 (slowing down in 2010-2015). It reached 161 Mha (38% of the EU territory) in 2015. Of this area, 84% is potentially available for wood supply. 2. The total aboveground biomass stocked in EU forests reached 18 600 Mt in 2013. It has been increasing since 2000 at a rate of approximately 1.3% per year (see section 2), although the forest growth has been slowing down slightly, mostly due to ageing of forests. 3. The average annual harvest level – 281 Mt (of which 224 Mt are removed from the forest) – amounts to 63% of the growth rate (measured as net annual increment) of EU forests – 444 Mt per year. Since fellings are underreported, the actual harvest rate is likely to be higher, but still not exceeding the growth rate. 4. Detailed and harmonised quantitative data on forest management, and especially wood removals, present severe gaps and uncertainties at EU level, with marked differences between Member States. While significant progress has been made, efforts to improve the current assessments should be pursued. 5. Sustainable wood production implies reconciling the full range of ecosystem services which the forests provide.JRC.D.1-Bio-econom

The role of the land use, land use change and forestry sector in achieving Annex I reduction pledges

Annex I Parties may receive credits or debits from Land Use, Land Use Change and Forestry (LULUCF) activities, contributing to achieving individual emission reduction targets. In the Durban climate negotiations, Parties agreed new LULUCF accounting rules for the second commitment period of the Kyoto Protocol (CP2). By using these new rules, this paper presents key differences among Parties at the minimum (assuming no additional action) and potential (assuming additional actions) contribution of the forest-related LULUCF activities in achieving the pledges for 2020. Overall, the potential contribution of LULUCF is relatively modest (up to about 2% of 1990 emissions) for the EU, the Annex I Parties likely joining the CP2, and for the Annex I Parties that joined the CP1 as a whole. However, for specific Parties, LULUCF can make a substantial contribution to achieving the pledges. For New Zealand, for instance, the potential contribution of future LULUCF credits may equal 33% of its 1990 emission level. For Australia, the pledges are expressed relative to 2000 emission levels including LULUCF emissions. Given that LULUCF emissions have strongly declined between 1990 and 2000, and a further decline in foreseen by 2020 (based on Australia’s projections), the minimum contribution of LULUCF to meet the Australian pledges appears to be about 19% and 7% relative to its 1990 and 2000 emission level, respectively. A further 3% potential contribution is estimated from additional actions.JRC.H.3-Forest Resources and Climat

LULUCF MRV - Analysis and proposals for enhancing Monitoring, Reporting and Verification of greenhouse gases from Land Use, Land Use Change and Forestry in the EU

Land use land use change and forestry sector (LULUCF) is a greenhouse gas inventory (GHG) sector that covers anthropogenic emissions and removals from terrestrial carbon stocks living biomass dead organic matter and soil organic carbon following six main land use categories, Forest land, Cropland, Grassland, Wetlands, Settlements and Other land. According to the United Nation Framework Contract on Climate Change (UNFCCC) all Parties shall report periodically an update inventory of anthropogenic emissions and removals of GHG using comparable methodologies provided by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). Additional requirements exist for reporting and accounting emissions/removals from related direct-human induced activities under the Kyoto Protocol (KP), because its accounting quantities are counted towards an international commitment reduction target. International negotiations have resulted in recent years in the adoption of new rules (e.g. mandatory accounting of Forest management) for the second commitment period of the KP (CP2: 2013-2020). Furthermore, Decision 529/2013/EU, going beyond the international negotiation, added the mandatory accounting of Cropland management and Grassland management. All these changes pose new challenges that MS will need to face from 2015 (i.e. for starting to report during CP2). This report describes the actions undertaken in the context of the Administrative Arrangement “LULUCF MRV” (Monitoring, Reporting, Verification) with DG CLIMA, trough a sequence of tasks (described in detailed in the Annexes). The aim of the AA is to support MS in improving the quality and comparability of LULUCF reporting during CP2, in line with IPCC methods and the new rules at UNFCCC and EU level.JRC.H.3-Forest Resources and Climat

The role of the land use, land use change and forestry sector in achieving Annex I reduction pledges

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Wood resource balances of EU-28 and Member States

Annual Wood Resource Balance (WRB) sheets for all EU Member States and for the European Union as a whole are now available for the years from 2009 to 2015 on the European Commission’s Knowledge Centre for Bioeconomy web portal at: https://ec.europa.eu/knowledge4policy/publication/wood-resource-balances. This technical brief provides a description of the WRB structure and definitions, also reporting on the data sources used and the methods applied to derive the estimates.JRC.D.1-Bio-econom

Science-based approach for credible accounting of mitigation in managed forests

Abstract Background The credibility and effectiveness of country climate targets under the Paris Agreement requires that, in all greenhouse gas (GHG) sectors, the accounted mitigation outcomes reflect genuine deviations from the type and magnitude of activities generating emissions in the base year or baseline. This is challenging for the forestry sector, as the future net emissions can change irrespective of actual management activities, because of age-related stand dynamics resulting from past management and natural disturbances. The solution implemented under the Kyoto Protocol (2013–2020) was accounting mitigation as deviation from a projected (forward-looking) “forest reference level”, which considered the age-related dynamics but also allowed including the assumed future implementation of approved policies. This caused controversies, as unverifiable counterfactual scenarios with inflated future harvest could lead to credits where no change in management has actually occurred, or conversely, failing to reflect in the accounts a policy-driven increase in net emissions. Instead, here we describe an approach to set reference levels based on the projected continuation of documented historical forest management practice, i.e. reflecting age-related dynamics but not the future impact of policies. We illustrate a possible method to implement this approach at the level of the European Union (EU) using the Carbon Budget Model. Results Using EU country data, we show that forest sinks between 2013 and 2016 were greater than that assumed in the 2013–2020 EU reference level under the Kyoto Protocol, which would lead to credits of 110–120 Mt CO2/year (capped at 70–80 Mt CO2/year, equivalent to 1.3% of 1990 EU total emissions). By modelling the continuation of management practice documented historically (2000–2009), we show that these credits are mostly due to the inclusion in the reference levels of policy-assumed harvest increases that never materialized. With our proposed approach, harvest is expected to increase (12% in 2030 at EU-level, relative to 2000–2009), but more slowly than in current forest reference levels, and only because of age-related dynamics, i.e. increased growing stocks in maturing forests. Conclusions Our science-based approach, compatible with the EU post-2020 climate legislation, helps to ensure that only genuine deviations from the continuation of historically documented forest management practices are accounted toward climate targets, therefore enhancing the consistency and comparability across GHG sectors. It provides flexibility for countries to increase harvest in future reference levels when justified by age-related dynamics. It offers a policy-neutral solution to the polarized debate on forest accounting (especially on bioenergy) and supports the credibility of forest sector mitigation under the Paris Agreement

An integrated modelling framework for the forest-based bioeconomy

This paper describes the conceptual design of a modelling framework to assess scenarios for the forest-based bioeconomy. The framework consists of a core set of tools: a partial equilibrium model for the forest sector, a forestry dynamics model for forest growth and harvest and a wood resources balance sheet. The framework can be expanded to include an energy model, a land use model, cost-supply curves and a forest ownership decision model. This partially integrated, multi-disciplinary modelling framework is described, with particular emphasis on the structure of the variables to be exchanged between the framework tools. The data exchange is subject to a series of integrity checks to ensure that the model is computing the correct information in the correct format and order of elements.JRC.H.3-Forest Resources and Climat

Forest reference levels under Regulation (EU) 2018/841 for the period 2021-2025: Overview and main findings of the technical assessment

Regulation (EU) 2018/841 (‘LULUCF regulation’) sets the accounting rules for the Land Use, Land-Use Change and Forestry (LULUCF) sector in the EU for 2021–2030, i.e. how the emissions and removals of greenhouse gases from LULUCF will be counted towards the climate targets. The LULUCF regulation is part of the EU’s commitment to reduce overall emissions by at least 40% by 2030 under the Climate and Energy framework. Every Member State must balance its accounted greenhouse gas emissions on the LULUCF sector by an equal amount of accounted greenhouse gas removals. Possible surplus removals, under certain conditions and up to an overall total of 280 Mt CO2e, may be used to compensate emissions from the sectors covered by the Effort Sharing Regulation. The technically most complex part of the LULUCF regulation is the set of accounting rules for managed forest land, which are based on a projected Forest Reference Level (FRL), estimated nationally by each EU Member State. The FRL is a benchmark level against which future net emissions from forests are accounted for. In its essence, the FRL is a projection of the net emissions from managed forest land in 2021—2030 (divided into two compliance periods, 2021—2025 and 2026—2030), assuming that the forest management practices had continued similar to the practices in the reference period 2000—2009. This way, the FRL provides a means to account for the impact of policy changes on the emissions and removals from forests, while factoring out the impact of age-related dynamics in the forests. The FRLs for the 2021—2025 period are reported as a part of National Forestry Accounting Plans (NFAPs). After a thorough assessment by the European Commission and a dedicated Expert Group in 2019 and 2020, these FRLs are due to be laid down in a delegated act adopted by the Commission by the end of October 2020. This report outlines the main technical findings of the assessment of the Member States’ proposed FRLs, and complements the forthcoming Commission Staff Working Document (2020) accompanying the delegated act. The assessment found that the Member States had generally followed the principles and criteria laid out in the LULUCF regulation. The NFAPs provide a wealth of information on the forests and forest management practices in the Member States – some of which has not been available for the international community before – and in general include the elements required by the LULUCF regulation. All Member States projected the development of the forest net emissions for 2021—2025 as a continuation of the historical management practices, therefore excluding assumptions on policy development. While the submissions by the Member States were in general detailed and carefully prepared, the assessment identified in several cases minor issues that will need to be amended before the compliance check. The most common issues are related to methodological inconsistencies between carbon pools, greenhouse gases or forest area included in the FRL and those reported in the national greenhouse gas inventories. Some of these mismatches have already been amended by the Member States through Addenda or Corrigenda to the NFAPs. The remaining inconsistencies will be addressed through technical corrections to the FRLs at the end of the compliance period and therefore do not impair the reliability of the FRL as an accounting baseline. For five Member States, the assessment resulted in a recalculation of the Member State-proposed FRL by the Commission. In numerical terms, the sum of the Member States’ FRLs (incl. the United Kingdom) in the delegated act is a projected sink of -337 Mt CO2 y-1 for the period 2021–2025. This projection is about 18% lower than the sink of -413 Mt CO2 y-1 reported by the EU 2019 greenhouse gas inventory on managed forest land for the period 2000—2009 (EEA 2019). The FRL projection is associated with a projected increase of harvest by about 19% over the same period, due to age-related effects. It is noteworthy that the FRLs project sustainable forest management practices as documented in the period 2000–2009, taking into account dynamic age-related forest characteristics, and do not represent an expected sink or expected harvest levels. Instead, the FRLs laid out in the delegated act provide a robust and trustworthy counterfactual for accounting the impact of mitigation actions on emissions and removals from managed forest land in the first compliance period 2021—2025.JRC.D.1-Bio-econom

Biomass production, supply, uses and flows in the European Union: First results from an integrated assessment

The report delivers an assessment of EU biomass production, uses, flows and related environmental impacts for the sectors agriculture, forestry, fisheries and aquaculture, and algae. Quantitative estimates are derived from available data and current knowledge, yet highlighting the uncertainties and the remaining gaps. The work is framed within the JRC biomass study and is meant to support the EU bioeconomy and the related policies.JRC.D.1-Bio-econom