The Missing Limb: Including Impacts of Biomass Extraction on Forest Carbon Stocks in GHG Balances of Wood Use

Fehrenbach, Henry; Bischoff, Mascha; Böttcher, Hannes; Reise, Judith; Hennenberg, Klaus Josef

doi:10.20944/preprints202112.0499.v1

Cited by 3 publications

(3 citation statements)

References 17 publications

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“…Examples of such may be wood efficiently used for construction and bioenergy employed with carbon capture and storage (Soimakallio et al, 2021). Fehrenbach et al (2021) demonstrated in a case study for Germany that including CBI in GHG balances is relevant for climate policy. They found the effectiveness of GHG mitigation options involving wood use to be considerably reduced when accounting for the impacts of tree harvest on carbon stocks in forests assuming a CBI value of 0.25-1.15 t CO 2 /m 3 (~0.34-1.57 t C /t C with conversion factor of 0.2 t C /m 3 ) wood under German conditions.…”

Section: Putting Cbi Into Contextmentioning

confidence: 99%

Closing an open balance: The impact of increased tree harvest on forest carbon

et al. 2022

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Fossil‐based emissions can be avoided by using wood in place of non‐renewable raw materials as energy and materials. However, wood harvest influences forest carbon stocks. Increased harvest may reduce the overall climate benefit of wood use significantly, but is widely overlooked. We reviewed selected simulation studies and compared differences in forest carbon and amount of wood harvested between harvest scenarios of different intensities for three different time perspectives: short‐ (1–30 years), mid‐ (31–70 years), and long‐term (71–100 years). Out of more than 450 reviewed studies 45 provided adequate data. Our results show that increased harvest reduces carbon stocks over 100 years in temperate and boreal forests by about 1.6 (stdev 0.9) tC per tC harvested (referred to as carbon balance indicator (CBI)). CBI proved to be robust when outliers explicitly influenced by factors other than changes in the harvest rate, such as fertilization or increase in forest area, were removed. The carbon impacts tend to be greatest in the mid‐term, but no significant difference in was found for average values between short and long time‐horizons. CBI can be interpreted as carbon opportunity costs of wood harvest in forests. Our results indicate that even after 100 years, CBI is significant compared to the typical GHG credits expected in the technosphere by avoiding fossil emissions in substitution and increasing carbon stocks in harvested wood products. Our estimates provide typical values that can directly be included in GHG balances of products or assessments of mitigation policies and measures related to wood use. However, more systematic scenarios with transparent information on influencing factors for forest carbon stocks are required to provide better constrained estimates for specific forest types.

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Section: Putting Cbi Into Contextmentioning

confidence: 99%

Closing an open balance: The impact of increased tree harvest on forest carbon

et al. 2022

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“…Fehrenbach et al [29] demonstrated in a case study for Germany that including CBI in GHG balances is relevant for climate policy. They found the effectiveness of GHG mitigation options involving wood use to be considerably reduced when accounting for impacts of roundwood removals on carbon stocks in forests assuming a CBI value of 0.25 to 1.15 t CO2/m³ wood under German conditions.…”

Section: Putting Cbi In Contextmentioning

confidence: 99%

Closing an Open Balance: the Impact of Increased Roundwood Harvest on Forest Carbon

Soimakallio¹,

Böttcher²,

Niemi³

et al. 2022

Preprint

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Fossil-based emissions can be avoided through using wood in place of non-renewable raw materials as energy and materials. However, increasing wood harvest influences forest carbon stocks. This effect may reduce the overall climate benefit of wood use significantly but is widely overlooked. We carried out a systematic review of simulation studies and compared differences in forest carbon and amount of wood harvested between more and less intensive wood harvest scenarios for three different time perspectives; short (1-30 years), mid (31-70 years) and long (71-100 years). Out of more than 450 reviewed studies 44 provided adequate data. Our results show that increased harvesting reduced carbon stocks over 100 years in temperate and boreal forests roughly 1.6 (stdev 0.9) tC per tC harvested. The value proved to be robust when outliers explicitly influenced by other factors than change in harvest rate, such as increase in fertilization or forest area, were removed. Interestingly, no significant difference in carbon impacts was found for average values of boreal and temperate forests or between short and long time-horizons. However, impacts tend to be greatest in the mid-term. This carbon balance indicator that we estimated can be interpreted as carbon debit of wood harvest in forests. It is significant compared with the typical GHG credits in technosphere generated by avoiding fossil emissions in substitution and increase in carbon storage in harvested wood products, and should not be ignored. Our estimates provide default values that can directly be included in GHG balances of products or assessment of mitigation policies and measures related to wood use. However, more systematic scenarios and transparent data in which different factors influencing forest carbon stocks are separately studied are clearly required to provide better constrained estimates for specific forest types.

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“…Consider how informative a CBI value, or the discussed range of ~0.34 to 1.57 tC/tC (Fehrenbach et al 2021), is as such, without information that the lower value was actually caused by a series of storms and drought that reduced both C and H in Germany. The likely existence of similar or opposite (+ΔC/+ΔH) cases argues against the use of filtered average CBIs.…”

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Comments on Soimakallio et al. (2022) “Closing an open balance: The impact of increased tree harvest on forest carbon”

Vauhkonen

2023

GCB Bioenergy

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Soimakallio et al. (2022) reviewed literature to draw leveraged conclusions on how forest carbon balances are affected by increased harvest rates. The conclusions are based on a carbon balance indicator that is not transparent and loses information when averaged over multiple factors. While potentially useful for comparing fossil fuel displacement by wood in alternative harvest scenarios of a given forest resource, the indicator should not be used to compare scenarios based on different forest and forestry conditions.

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The Missing Limb: Including Impacts of Biomass Extraction on Forest Carbon Stocks in GHG Balances of Wood Use

Cited by 3 publications

References 17 publications

Closing an open balance: The impact of increased tree harvest on forest carbon

Closing an open balance: The impact of increased tree harvest on forest carbon

Closing an Open Balance: the Impact of Increased Roundwood Harvest on Forest Carbon

Comments on Soimakallio et al. (2022) “Closing an open balance: The impact of increased tree harvest on forest carbon”

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