Key messages about
forest carbon management
forest carbon management
The role of forests and wood products in decarbonizing Europe’s economy
A related news article was recently published by Der Standard (Austria).
Understanding carbon dynamics in forest ecosystems
- Forest carbon is stored in both above-ground (branches, trunks, foliage) and belowground (roots) biomass, and in soil as organic carbon (residues plus organisms).
- In all types of forests around the world, the soil organic carbon pool is higher than the above-ground biomass pool, except in tropical forests where the two pools are similar.
- While soil carbon sequestration is a long-term process (decades or even centuries), the release of this carbon back to the atmosphere after a disturbance takes merely days or weeks. Additionally, the capacity of soils to uptake carbon is limited and cannot be increased indefinitely.
- Soil organic carbon, once lost, cannot be recovered in a human lifetime.
- The decrease in above-ground forest carbon in Europe is mainly caused by natural disturbances (storms, fire, pests, etc.) and ageing of forests. Any significant changes in above-ground biomass will also affect the belowground carbon stocks.
Managing forest carbon at the stand level
- Generally, many forests in Europe are losing their capacity to mitigate climate change.
- Given the increasing uncertainty mainly due to natural disturbances, the focus in forest governance and management should be more on securing existing forest carbon rather than increasing it.
- Disturbance risk increases the higher the amount of above-ground biomass is.
- Likely, future forests will be less tall, have less biomass, and be more diverse.
- In the short to medium term, key risk management strategies include soil rewetting, increase of tree species diversity, stand density regulation (thinning), and wildfire prevention. In the long term, there is vast potential to improve adaptive capacity through genetic selection.
- The necessary transformation and diversification of forests will require significant investments in forestry and wood value chains.
LULUCF carbon accounting and contributions of wood products and material substitution
- Signatory countries must report on annual greenhouse gases (GHG) inventories under the UNFCCC, Paris Agreement, and EU Regulations. LULUCF is the only GHG sector including both emissions and removals, though it has higher estimates’ uncertainty.
- EU GHG targets for 2030 prescribe an increase in LULUCF and forest land net sink. However, since 2015, the trend is going from a net sink to a net source. Causes for this decline include: higher commercial harvesting rates and higher salvage logging due to an increase in natural disturbances; decrease in tree volume increment due to prolonged droughts; and higher temperatures leading to higher emissions from organic soils.
- Long-term harvested wood products are an important carbon mitigation solution due to a lower carbon footprint than the materials they could substitute. The longer the lifetime of the harvested wood product, the better its GHG effect.
- Wood use for energy would ideally occur at the end of the wood product’s life cycle. Alternatively, this use should be reduced to components of the tree that cannot be used for long-term harvested products.
- Due to biomass’ limited availability, it can only substitute GHG-intensive materials to a limited extent.
References
Understanding carbon dynamics in forest ecosystems
USGCRP. Second State of the Carbon Cycle Report. (2018). Available at: https://carbon2018.globalchange.gov/ (Accessed: 21st June 2019)
Treseder, K. K. & Holden, S. R. Fungal Carbon Sequestration. Science 339, 1528–1529 (2013).
Bradford, J. B. & Kastendick, D. N. Age-related patterns of forest complexity and carbon storage in pine and aspen–birch ecosystems of northern Minnesota, USA. Can. J. For. Res. 40, 401–409 (2010).
Cardenas, E. et al. Forest harvesting reduces the soil metagenomic potential for biomass decomposition. ISME J 9, 2465–2476 (2015).
Seidl, R., Senf, C. Changes in planned and unplanned canopy openings are linked in Europe’s forests. Nat Commun 15, 4741 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-024-49116-
Managing forest carbon at the stand level
Ramsfield, T. D., Bentz, B. J., Faccoli, M., Jactel, H., & Brockerhoff, E. G. (2016). Forest health in a changing world: Effects of globalization and climate change on forest insect and pathogen impacts. Forestry, 89(3), 245–252. https://doi.org/10.1093/forestry/cpw018
Forzieri, G., Girardello, M., Ceccherini, G. et al. Emergent vulnerability to climate-driven disturbances in European forests. Nat Commun 12, 1081 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-021-21399-7
Willig et al. Annals of Forest Science https://doi.org/10.1186/s13595-025-01278-7
Arnaud Giuggiola, Harald Bugmann, Andreas Zingg, Matthias Dobbertin, Andreas Rigling, Reduction of stand density increases drought resistance in xeric Scots pine forests, Forest Ecology and Management, Volume 310, 2013, Pages 827-835, ISSN 0378-1127, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.foreco.2013.09.030
Chakraborty, D., Ciceu, A., Ballian, D. et al. Assisted tree migration can preserve the European forest carbon sink under climate change. Nat. Clim. Chang. 14, 845–852 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41558-024-02080-5
Messier C, Bauhus J, Sousa-Silva R, et al. For the sake of resilience and multifunctionality, let’s diversify planted forests! Conservation Letters. 2022; 15:e12829. https://doi.org/10.1111/conl.12829
LULUCF carbon accounting and contributions of wood products and material substitution
2019 Refinement to the 2006 IPCC Guidelines for National Greenhouse Gas Inventories https://www.ipcc.ch/report/2019-refinement-to-the-2006-ipcc-guidelines-for-national-greenhouse-gas-inventories/
European Environment Agency: Annual European Union greenhouse gas inventory 1990–2022 and inventory document 2024, EA/PUBL/2024/046, 13 December 2024. https://www.eea.europa.eu/en/analysis/publications/annual-european-union-greenhouse-gas-inventory
Diverse and resilient forests and sustainable forest products have a key role to play in tackling climate change and contributing to the achievement of the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).