Cumulative Carbon Fluxes Due to Selective Logging in Southeast Asia

Vathana Khun,Nophea Sasaki

doi:10.4236/lce.2014.54018

Abstract

Selective logging creates a large amount of wood residues in forests in addition to producing a small amount of sawnwood for use as source of construction materials. Although accounting for carbon fluxes in harvested wood products (HWPs) becomes necessary in the fight against climate change, previous studies focused mainly on carbon fluxes in HWPs in temperate and boreal forests. This report attempts to analyze carbon fluxes in various wood components created by selective logging in production forest in Southeast Asia during a hypothetical period of carbon project implementation between 2015 and 2050 under conventional (CVL) and reduced-impact logging (RIL). Study results suggest that CVL produced about 146.6 (±5.4) million m3 annually. Logging created annual carbon fluxes of about 0.23, 0.23, 0.20, 0.69, and 0.15 MgC ha-1·year-1 in sawnwood, wood wastes at sawmills (SWW), wood product wastes due to logging damages remained in the forests (WPW), branches and top logs (BRA), and belowground dead root (BLD), respectively. Cumulative carbon fluxes were estimated at 281.0, 506.6, and 87.4 TgC year-1 in sawnwood, onsite (WPW, BRA, BLD), and offsite (SWW) pools, respectively. Except in SW, cumulative carbon fluxes in onsite and offsite pools showed a decline trend in about 10 years after logging. Switching from CVL to RIL could increase fluxes in sawnwood 60% higher than that under CVL, while reducing fluxes in short-lived onsite and offsite wood residues. Not only RIL can increase carbon fluxes in sawnwood, it can also increase production of sawnwood and retain more carbon in standing forests.

Highlights

Forests are important for climate change mitigation because forests can play both roles in either carbon sinksHow to cite this paper: Khun, V. and Sasaki, N. (2014) Cumulative Carbon Fluxes Due to Selective Logging in Southeast Asia
Selective logging in tropical forests produces wood production for construction materials necessary to support economic development
We used first order decay function to estimate carbon fluxes in various wood components created by selective logging in production forest in Southeast Asia under Conventional Logging (CVL) and Reduced Impact Logging (RIL)

Summary

Introduction

Forests are important for climate change mitigation because forests can play both roles in either carbon sinksHow to cite this paper: Khun, V. and Sasaki, N. (2014) Cumulative Carbon Fluxes Due to Selective Logging in Southeast Asia. Net sink in forests was estimated at 1.1 PgC year−1 between 1990 and 2007 [1] or about 12% of global carbon emissions from fossil burning and cement production in 2010. Dymond [5] developed accounting methods (British Columbia Harvested Wood Products version 1) for HWPs in British Columbia, Canada for 1965-2065. Based on his findings, the author argued that default accounting methods developed by Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) overestimated carbon emissions in North America and suggested that IPCC modified emission factor from its current default of 1.0 to 0.52. Author suggested that increasing wood durability is likely to increase more carbon storage

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Conclusion