Influence of the Wood Species, Forest Management Practice and Allocation Method on the Environmental Impacts of Roundwood and Biomass

Abstract

This study quantifies and compares the environmental impacts of production systems of biomass and roundwood from different wood species—maritime pine, eucalyptus, and cryptomeria. The results showed that roundwood and biomass from eucalyptus had the highest environmental impacts in most of the environmental categories. In contrast, cryptomeria products had the lowest impacts. For biomass, the impacts were higher for the forest production scenario when less biomass was produced (eucalyptus). The literature review showed that one of the main topics under study in the quantification of the environmental impacts of biomass is the allocation methodology. Thus, this study compared the environmental impacts of the various scenarios considering different methods of allocation: sub-division of processes, volume, mass, economy, and energy. The results showed that, for most scenarios, the biomass environmental impacts calculated by subdivision of processes had the highest values. In contrast, the environmental impacts of biomass calculated by economic allocation had the lowest environmental impact in most scenarios. The impacts of mass and energy allocation were similar for both products in all scenarios. Furthermore, this study showed that the system boundaries in biomass production have a strong influence on the environmental impacts and require further research.

Application of MaxEnt Model in Biomass Estimation: An Example of Spruce Forest in the Tianshan Mountains of the Central-Western Part of Xinjiang, China

“…Therefore, AGB estimates can provide a better understanding of future forest carbon emissions and sequestration, which can be used to make timely adjustments to forestry management practices according to emission reduction targets. In addition, dynamic biomass monitoring also serves as convincing evidence of the effectiveness of forest management and climate change mitigation [15,16].…”

Environmental evaluation of experimental heat-treated oriented strand board

“…There are numerous published studies that have assessed the environmental aspects of wood-based products applied as building materials in civil construction, such as roundwood (Dias and Arroja 2012;Kuka et al 2019;Dias et al 2022), structural engineered wood products (Hill and Dibdiakova 2016;Laurent et al 2016;Scouse et al 2020;Dias et al 2020Dias et al , 2021a, wooden floors (Dossche et al 2018;Dias et al 2021a,b) wooden doors (Deng et al 2023;Wang et al 2023), and different types of wood-based panels or products made with wood panels (Rivela et al 2007;Benetto et al 2009;González-García et al 2011;Silva et al 2013;Garcia and Freire 2014;Maoduš et al 2016;Ferro et al 2018;Li et al 2019;de Carvalho Araújo et al 2022;Farjana et al 2023).…”