Background: Forests and the forest sector may play an important role in mitigating climate change. The Paris Agreement
and the recent legislative proposal to include the land use sector in the EU 2030 climate targets reflect this
expectation. However, greater confidence on estimates from national greenhouse gas inventories (GHGI) and more
comprehensive analyses of mitigation options are needed to seize this mitigation potential. The aim of this paper is to
provide a tool at EU level for verifying the EU GHGI and for simulating specific policy and forest management scenarios.
Therefore, the Carbon Budget Model (CBM) was applied for an integrated assessment of the EU forest carbon (C)
balance from 2000 to 2012, including: (i) estimates of the C stock and net CO2 emissions for forest management (FM),
afforestation/reforestation (AR) and deforestation (D), covering carbon in both the forest and the harvest wood product
(HWP) pools; (ii) an overall analysis of the C dynamics associated with harvest and natural disturbances (mainly
storms and fires); (iii) a comparison of our estimates with the data reported in the EU GHGI.
Results: Overall, the average annual FM sink (−365 Mt CO2 year−1) estimated by the CBM in the period 2000–2012
corresponds to about 7 % of total GHG emissions at the EU level for the same period (excluding land use, landuse
change and forestry). The HWP pool sink (−44 Mt CO2 year−1) contributes an additional 1 %. Emissions from D
(about 33 Mt CO2 year−1) are more than compensated by the sink in AR (about 43 Mt CO2 year−1 over the period).
For FM, the estimates from the CBM were about 8 % lower than the EU GHGI, a value well within the typical uncertainty
range of the EU forest sink estimates. For AR and D the match with the EU GHGI was nearly perfect (difference
<±2 % in the period 2008–2012). Our analysis on harvest and natural disturbances shows that: (i) the impact
of harvest is much greater than natural disturbances but, because of salvage logging (often very relevant), the
impact of natural disturbances is often not easily distinguishable from the impact of harvest, and (ii) the impact of
storms on the biomass C stock is 5–10 times greater than fires, but while storms cause only indirect emissions (i.e., a
transfer of C from living biomass to dead organic matter), fires cause both direct and indirect emissions.
Conclusions: This study presents the application of a consistent methodological approach, based on an inventorybased
model, adapted to the forest management conditions of EU countries. The approach captures, with satisfactory
detail, the C sink reported in the EU GHGI and the country-specific variability due to harvest, natural disturbances and
land-use changes. To our knowledge, this is the most comprehensive study of its kind at EU level, i.e., including all the
forest pools, HWP and natural disturbances, and a comparison with the EU GHGI. The results provide the basis for possible
future policy-relevant applications of this model, e.g., as a tool to support GHGIs (e.g., on accounting for natural
disturbances) and to verify the EU GHGI, and for the simulation of specific scenarios at EU level.
PILLI Roberto;
GRASSI Giacomo;
KURZ Werner;
MORIS Jose;
ABAD VIÑAS Raúl;
2016-09-01
BIOMED CENTRAL
JRC97400
1750-0680,
http://cbmjournal.springeropen.com/articles/10.1186/s13021-016-0059-4,
https://publications.jrc.ec.europa.eu/repository/handle/JRC97400,
10.1186/s13021-016-0059-4,
