Contribution of cork oak plantations installed after 1990 in Portugal to the Kyoto commitments and to the landowners economy

Marta Baptista Coelho, Joana Amaral Paulo, João Henrique Nunes Palma and Margarida Tomé

Forest Policy and Economics, 2012, vol. 17, issue C, 59-68

Abstract: Cork oak stands are a part of the agroforestry ecosystem in Portugal, characterized by a low crown cover from cork oak trees, managed towards cork production, and sometimes in combination with grazing. In recent years, European Union policies gave impetus to a large area of new cork oak plantations, which have been established mainly for cork production purposes, and consequently with higher stand density than traditional agroforestry systems. These plantations are important not only for cork production but also for the carbon sequestered by these slow growing forests that won't be harvested for wood production. Thinning operations will be needed to avoid excessive inter-tree competition and wood extracted from these thinning may also provide income for the owners. In the present study, carbon sequestered and wood volumes resulting from thinning were estimated for the next 70years. Three scenarios of different annual afforestation rates and different site indexes were tested. The resulting values for the considered scenarios show that, if the plantation rates are maintained, new cork oak plantations will have an important contribution to the Portuguese commitments to providing CO2 offsets under the Kyoto protocol. Additionally, due to the increasing values of initial density in new cork plantations, cork oak forests will produce a significant volume of wood that may become an important contribution to the landowners' income.

Keywords: Cork oak; New plantations area; Wood; Carbon sequestration; Kyoto protocol (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2012
References: View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1389934111001845
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:forpol:v:17:y:2012:i:c:p:59-68

DOI: 10.1016/j.forpol.2011.10.005

Access Statistics for this article

Forest Policy and Economics is currently edited by M. Krott

More articles in Forest Policy and Economics from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().