On the Reliability of International Forest Sector Statistics: Problems and Needs for Improvements

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On Carbon Storage and Substitution Factors of Harvested Wood Products in the Context of Climate Change Impacts of the Norwegian Forest Sector

Harvested wood products (HWP) contribute to climate change mitigation via two main mechanisms: carbon storage and substitution. The authors examined the data on carbon storage and substitution factors of HWPs that are relevant in evaluating the climate change mitigation potential in the context of the Norwegian forest sector. While there seem to be many uncertainties in these parameters, the data suggest that several uses of wood for industrial products come with clear carbon substitution benefits and, in some cases, provide long-term carbon storage. Such wood products could play an important role in climate-friendly bioeconomic transformation. In particular, the authors considered wood- based construction materials, textile fibres, and insulation materials as examples of such products with potential in future bioeconomy. The decay of the carbon stored in HWP pools over time is often modelled using the product half-lives that correspond to the number of years it takes for the carbon in a pool to be reduced to half of its initial value. Using the default half-life values of greenhouse gases reported to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, the average half-life of carbon in HWPs produced by the forest industry in Norway of today is approximately 21 years. Shifting some of the use of pulpwood and sawn wood chips from producing paper and pellets to produce insulation materials or panels for construction would increase the time carbon is stored in the HWP pool. Accounting for the large uncertainty in the carbon substitution parameters of HWPs found in this study, a cautious estimate of the substitution benefits of HWPs produced in Norway can be considered to amount to at least 5 Mt CO2. Redirecting some pulpwood use from paper production to the production of textile fibres and the above-mentioned construction materials would increase the substitution benefits

Species selection in areas subjected to risk of root and butt rot: applying Precision forestry in Norway

Norway’s most common tree species, Picea abies (L.) Karst. (Norway spruce), is often infected with Heterobasidion parviporum Niemelä & Korhonen and Heterobasidion annosum (Fr.) Bref.. Because Pinus sylvestris L. (Scots pine) is less susceptible to rot, it is worth considering if converting rot-infested spruce stands to pine improves economic performance. We examined the economically optimal choice between planting Norway spruce and Scots pine for previously spruce-dominated clear-cut sites of different site indexes with initial rot levels varying from 0% to 100% of stumps on the site. While it is optimal to continue to plant Norway spruce in regions with low rot levels, shifting to Scots pine pays off when rot levels get higher. The threshold rot level for changing from Norway spruce to Scots pine increases with the site index. We present a case study demonstrating a practical method (“Precision forestry”) for determining the tree species in a stand at the pixel level when the stand is heterogeneous both in site indexes and rot levels. This method is consistent with the concept of Precision forestry, which aims to plan and execute site-specific forest management activities to improve the quality of wood products while minimising waste, increasing profits, and maintaining environmental quality. The material for the study includes data on rot levels and site indexes in 71 clear-cut stands. Compared to planting the entire stand with a single species, pixel-level optimised species selection increases the net present value in almost every stand, with average increase of approximately 6%

The European Forest and Agriculture Optimisation Model -- EUFASOM

Land use is a key factor to social wellbeing and has become a major component in political negotiations. This paper describes the mathematical structure of the European Forest and Agricultural Sector Optimization Model. The model represents simultaneously observed resource and technological heterogeneity, global commodity markets, and multiple environmental qualities. Land scarcity and land competition between traditional agriculture, forests, nature reserves, pastures, and bioenergy plantations is explicitly captured. Environmental change, technological progress, and policies can be investigated in parallel. The model is well-suited to estimate competitive economic potentials of land based mitigation, leakage, and synergies and trade-offs between multiple environmental objectives.Land Use Change Optimization, Resource Scarcity, Market Competition, Welfare Maximization, Bottom-up Partial Equilibrium Analysis, Agricultural Externality Mitigation, Forest Dynamics, Global Change Adaptation, Environmental Policy Simulation, Integrated Assessment, Mathematical Programming, GAMS

Forests and climate: New insights from forest sector modeling

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The EFI-GTM model: past - present - future

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Economic impacts on the forest sector of increasing forest biodiversity conservation in Finland

In the next coming years, political decisions will be made upon future actions to safeguard forest biodiversity in Southern Finland. We address the economic consequences on the Finnish forest sector of conserving additional 0.5% to 5% of the old growth forest land in Southern Finland. The impacts on supply, demand and prices of wood and forest industry production are analysed employing a partial equilibrium model of the Finnish forest sector. An increase in conservation raises wood prices and thus the production costs of the forest industry. This makes sawnwood production fall, but does not affect paper and paperboard production. The forest owners’ aggregated wood sales income is unaffected or slightly increased, because an increase in stumpage prices offsets the decrease in the harvests. If conservation increases wood imports, negative effects on forest industry become smaller whereas aggregated forest owners’ income may decline depending on the magnitude of import substitution.</ja:p