Forest management and carbon sequestration in wood products |
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Authors: | Ingolf Profft Martina Mund Georg-Ernst Weber Eberhard Weller Ernst-Detlef Schulze |
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Institution: | 1.Thuringian State Institute for Forestry, Game and Fishery,Gotha,Germany;2.Max Planck Institute for Biogeochemistry,Jena,Germany |
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Abstract: | Wood products are considered to contribute to the mitigation of carbon dioxide emissions. A critical gap in the life cycle
of wood products is to transfer the raw timber from the forest to the processing wood industry and, thus, the primary wood
products. Therefore, often rough estimates are used for this step to obtain total forestry carbon balances. The objectives
of this study were (1) to examine the fate of timber harvested in Thuringian state forests (central Germany), representing
a large, intensively managed forested region, and (2) to quantify carbon stocks and the lifetime of primary wood products
made from this timber. The analyses were based on the amount and assortments of actually sold timber, and production parameters
of the companies that bought and processed this timber. In addition, for coniferous stands of a selected Thuringian forest
district, we calculated potential effects of management, as expressed by different thinning regimes on wood products and their
lifetimes. Total annual timber sale of soft- and hardwoods from Thuringian state forests (195,000 ha) increased from about
136,893 t C (~0.7 t C ha−1 year−1) in 1996 to 280,194 t C (~1.4 t C ha−1 year−1) in 2005. About 47% of annual total timber harvest went into short-lived wood products with a mean residence time (MRT) < 25
years. Thirty-one per cent of the total harvest went into wood products with an MRT of 25–43 years, and only 22% was used
as construction wood and glued wood, products with the longest MRT (50 years). The average MRT of carbon in harvested wood
products was 20 years. Thinning from above throughout the rotation of spruce forests would lead to an average MRT in harvested
wood products of about 23 years, thinning from below of about 18 years. A comparison of our calculations with estimates that
resulted from the products module of the CO2FIX model (Nabuurs et al. 2001) demonstrates the influence of regional differences in forest management and wood processing industry on the lifetime of
harvested wood products. To our knowledge, the present study provides for the first time real carbon inputs of a defined forest
management unit to the wood product sector by linking data on raw timber production, timber sales and wood processing. With
this new approach and using this data, it should be possible to substantially improve the net-carbon balance of the entire
forestry sector. |
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Keywords: | Harvested wood products Carbon sequestration Product lifetime Thinning from above Thinning from below |
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