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Under the European Union (EU) energy efficiency targets that Romania has assumed, increasing the share of solar energy has been one of the main points to be considered. The most important solar energy resources are found in the lowlands and low hills in southern and south-eastern parts of the country. The current paper is focused on the Romanian Plain, which has the best environmental conditions to support the development of photovoltaic (PV) farms. One hundred and ten PV farms have been identified and mapped which cover a total area of 1393 hectares. Although it provides a clean and sustainable energy source, the related environmental implications of PV farms could be either positive or negative. In this study, some of the main categories of impacts have been selected for identification and analysis of their environmental consequences. Several indicators have been computed: the share of PV farms from the main land use/cover categories and main soil types, and the distance of PV farms to forests, water bodies, or protected areas. The overall results of the study reveal the current and potential impacts of PV farms in order to understand the interactions between the environment and the use of renewable energy sources and further support science-based solutions for sustainable development.

The aboveground forest biomass plays a key role in the global carbon cycle and is considered a large and constant carbon reservoir. Hence, exploring the future potential changes in forest-cover pattern can help to estimate the trend of forest biomass and therefore, carbon stock in a certain area. As a result, the present paper attempts to model the potential changes in aboveground forest carbon stock based on the forest-cover pattern scenario simulated for 2050. Specifically, the resulting aboveground forest biomass, estimated for 2015 using the allometric equation based on diameter at breast height and the estimated forest density, was used as baseline data in the present approach. These spatial data were integrated into the forest-cover pattern scenario, predicted by using a spatially explicit model, i.e., the Conversion of Land Use and its Effects at Small regional extent (CLUE-S), in order to estimate the potential variation of aboveground forest carbon stock. Our results suggest an overall increase by approximately 4% in the aboveground forest carbon stock until 2050 in Romania. However, important differences in the forest-cover pattern change were predicted on the regional scale, thus highlighting that the rates of carbon accumulation will change significantly in large areas. This study may increase the knowledge of aboveground forest biomass and the future trend of carbon stock in the European countries. Furthermore, due to their predictive character, the results may provide a background for further studies, in order to investigate the potential ecological, socio-economic and forest management responses to the changes in the aboveground forest carbon stock. However, in view of the uncertainties associated with the data accuracy and methodology used, it is presumed that the results include several spatial errors related to the estimation of aboveground forest biomass and simulation of future forest-cover pattern change and therefore, represent an uncertainty for the practical management of applications and decisions.

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