A new way of carbon accounting emphasises the crucial role of sustainable timber use for successful carbon mitigation strategies

Abstract

The roles of forest management and the use of timber for energy in the global carbon cycle are discussed. Recent studies assert that past forest management has been accelerating climate change, for example in Europe. In addition, the increasing tendency to burn timber is an international concern. Here, we show a new way of carbon accounting considering the use of timber as a carbon neutral transfer into a pool of products. This approach underlines the robust, positive carbon mitigation effects of sustainable timber harvesting. Applying this new perspective, sustainable timber use can be interpreted not as a removal but a prevention of carbon being converted within the cycle of growth and respiration. Identifying timber use as a prevention rather than a removal leads to the understanding of timber use as being no source of carbon emissions of forests but as a carbon neutral transfer to the product pool. Subsequently, used timber will then contribute to carbon emissions from the pool of forest products in the future. Therefore, timber use contributes to carbon mitigation by providing a substantial delay of emissions. In a second step, the carbon model is applied to results of a previous study in which different timber price scenarios were used to predict timber harvests in Bavarian forests (Germany). Thus, the influence of the economic dimension “timber price” on the ecological dimension carbon sequestration was derived. It also shows that these effects are stable, even if an increasing tendency of burning timber products for producing energy is simulated. Linking an economic optimization to a biophysical model for carbon mitigation shows how the impact of management decisions on the environment can be derived. Overall, a sustainably managed system of forests and forest products contributes to carbon mitigation in a positive, stable way, even if the prices for (energy) wood rise substantially.