Impacts of bio-economy policies on forest ecosystem services: a boreal perspective

2018

One of the most pressing challenges for governments is how to move from a fossil- to a bio-based economy to achieve a sustainable growth. Bio-economy encompasses the production of renewable biological resources and the conversion of these resources into value-added products, such as biofuels. The use of bioenergy is regarded as an important climate change mitigation strategy and its annual demand is rapidly increasing. In particular, there is immense pressure to use boreal forest resources as bioenergy for meeting the challenging new bio-economy policy goals (EC 2012). For example, Finland will need to largely intensify timber production because policy aims at increasing the levels of energ…

Quantifying climate impacts and biodiversity effects of increased forest biomass harvests – an integrated assessment

2018

Increasing forest biomass harvests to combat climate change by replacing fossil fuels with bioenergy may pose a trade-off with climate regulation services of forests and biodiversity conservation. Previous forest bioenergy studies focus mainly, either on effects on carbon cycle or biodiversity impacts (1–3). These studies show that increased extraction of branches, stumps and other residual biomass from current levels decreases the carbon stock and the carbon sink capacity of forests, and has negative effects on species depended on deadwood. Nevertheless, still little is known how climate regulation services or biodiversity indicators respond to a large scale removal of harvest residues in …

Free time-slot for discussion

2018