Cradle to gate environmental impact assessment of the Iranian forestry operations

Abstract

This study conducts the first cradle-to-gate life cycle assessment (LCA) study on forestry operations in Iran and provides comprehensive regionalized life cycle inventory (LCI) data on the Iranian forest sector. This LCA employs midpoint and endpoint impact categories based on the IMPACT 2002+ method in addition to the cumulative exergy demand (CExD) indicator. The results of this study show that fuel consumption in harvesting machinery and fertilizer application in reforestation are two sources of direct emissions that contribute to different environmental impact categories. Transportation is the main hotspot in most midpoint environmental impact categories, such as global warming, or endpoint categories, such as human health. The total exergy removed from nature to produce 1 t of wood as logs is about 978 MJ-eq, accounting for 7.7% of the energy content in 1 t of wood. The global warming impact category equals 58 kg CO2-eq or 5.4% of the total CO2-eq contained in 1 t of wood as logs. The environmental performance of the system could be improved by expanding local clients rather than clients from other regions and upgrading inefficient machinery. Gains are also possible by conducting a comparative LCA analysis of different adaptable forest management strategies and harvesting methods compared to the business-as-usual approach in the Iranian forestry sector.