Lutter, Reimo and Stål, Gustav and Arnesson Ceder, Lina and Lim, Hyungwoo and Padari, Allar and Tullus, Hardi and Nordin, Annika and Lundmark, Tomas
(2021).
Climate Benefit of Different Tree Species on Former Agricultural Land in Northern Europe.
Forests. 12
:12
, 1810
[Research article]
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Abstract
The new European Union Forest Strategy for 2030 aims to plant an additional 3 billion trees on non-forest land to mitigate climate change. However, the choice of tree species for afforestation to achieve the maximum climate benefit is unclear. We compared the climate benefit of six different species in terms of carbon (C) sequestration in biomass and the harvested wood substitution in products to avoid carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions from fossil-based materials over the 100-year period by afforesting about 1/4 of the available area in northern Europe. The highest climate benefit was observed for larch, both at a stand scale (1626 Mg CO2 eqv. ha(-1)) and at the landscape level for the studied scenario (579 million Mg CO2 eqv.). Larch was followed by Norway spruce, poplar, hybrid aspen and birch, showing a climate benefit about 40-50% lower than that for larch. The climate benefit of willow was about 70% lower than larch. Willow showed 6-14-fold lower C stocks at the landscape level after 100 years than other tree species. The major climate benefit over the 100-year period comes from wood substitution and avoided emissions, but C stock buildup at the landscape level also removes significant amounts of CO2 already present in the atmosphere. The choice of tree species is important to maximize climate change mitigation.
Authors/Creators: | Lutter, Reimo and Stål, Gustav and Arnesson Ceder, Lina and Lim, Hyungwoo and Padari, Allar and Tullus, Hardi and Nordin, Annika and Lundmark, Tomas | ||||||
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Title: | Climate Benefit of Different Tree Species on Former Agricultural Land in Northern Europe | ||||||
Series Name/Journal: | Forests | ||||||
Year of publishing : | 2021 | ||||||
Volume: | 12 | ||||||
Number: | 12 | ||||||
Article number: | 1810 | ||||||
Number of Pages: | 15 | ||||||
Publisher: | MDPI | ||||||
ISSN: | 1999-4907 | ||||||
Language: | English | ||||||
Publication Type: | Research article | ||||||
Article category: | Scientific peer reviewed | ||||||
Version: | Published version | ||||||
Copyright: | Creative Commons: Attribution 4.0 | ||||||
Full Text Status: | Public | ||||||
Subjects: | (A) Swedish standard research categories 2011 > 4 Agricultural Sciences > 401 Agricultural, Forestry and Fisheries > Forest Science (A) Swedish standard research categories 2011 > 1 Natural sciences > 105 Earth and Related Environmental Sciences > Climate Research | ||||||
Keywords: | forest carbon, climate change, carbon substitution, willow, poplar, hybrid aspen, Norway spruce, silver birch, larch | ||||||
URN:NBN: | urn:nbn:se:slu:epsilon-p-115307 | ||||||
Permanent URL: | http://urn.kb.se/resolve?urn=urn:nbn:se:slu:epsilon-p-115307 | ||||||
Additional ID: |
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ID Code: | 26950 | ||||||
Faculty: | S - Faculty of Forest Sciences | ||||||
Department: | (S) > Dept. of Forest Ecology and Management (S) > Dept. of Forest Genetics and Plant Physiology | ||||||
Deposited By: | SLUpub Connector | ||||||
Deposited On: | 09 Feb 2022 11:25 | ||||||
Metadata Last Modified: | 09 Feb 2022 11:31 |
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