Sustainability Assessment of Intensified Forestry—Forest Bioenergy versus Forest Biodiversity Targeting Forest Birds

Ulla Mörtberg, Xi-Lillian Pang, Rimgaudas Treinys, Renats Trubins and Gintautas Mozgeris
Additional contact information
Ulla Mörtberg: KTH Royal Institute of Technology, SE-100 44 Stockholm, Sweden
Xi-Lillian Pang: KTH Royal Institute of Technology, SE-100 44 Stockholm, Sweden
Rimgaudas Treinys: Nature Research Centre, LT-08412 Vilnius, Lithuania
Renats Trubins: Southern Swedish Forest Research Centre, Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences, SE-230 53 Alnarp, Sweden
Gintautas Mozgeris: Institute of Forest Management and Wood Science, Faculty of Forest Sciences and Ecology, Agriculture Academy, Vytautas Magnus University, LT-53361 Akademija, Kaunas distr., Lithuania

Sustainability, 2021, vol. 13, issue 5, 1-19

Abstract: Intensified forestry can be seen as a solution to climate change mitigation and securing energy supply, increasing the production of forest bioenergy feedstock as a substitution for fossil fuels. However, it may come with detrimental impacts on forest biodiversity, especially related to older forests. The aim of this study was to assess the sustainability of intensified forestry from climate-energy and biodiversity perspectives, targeting forest bird species. For this purpose, we applied the Landscape simulation and Ecological Assessment (LEcA) tool to the study area of Lithuania, having high ambitions for renewables and high forest biodiversity. With LEcA, we simulated forest growth and management for 100 years with two forest management strategies: Business As Usual (BAU) and Intensive forestry (INT), the latter with the purpose to fulfil renewable energy goals. With both strategies, the biomass yields increased well above the yields of the reference year, while the biodiversity indicators related to forest bird habitat to different degrees show the opposite, with lower levels than for the reference year. Furthermore, Strategy INT resulted in small-to-no benefits in the long run concerning potential biomass harvesting, while substantially affecting the biodiversity indicators negatively. The model results have the potential to inform policy and forest management planning concerning several sustainability goals simultaneously.

Keywords: forest bioenergy feedstock; climate change mitigation; older forest; forest biodiversity; forest birds; forest management (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O13 Q Q0 Q2 Q3 Q5 Q56 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2021
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/13/5/2789/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/13/5/2789/ (text/html)

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:gam:jsusta:v:13:y:2021:i:5:p:2789-:d:510735

Access Statistics for this article

Sustainability is currently edited by Ms. Alexandra Wu

More articles in Sustainability from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().