THE ROLE OF EUROPEAN FORESTS IN THE GLOBAL CARBON-CYCLE - A REVIEW

The first part of this paper presents an overview of national forest c arbon balance studies that have been carried out in Europe. Based on t hese national assessments, an estimate is made of the present role of European forests in the global carbon cycle. Differences in the method ologies applied are discussed. At present, 15 European countries have assessed a national forest and/or forest sector carbon balance. Togeth er, these studies cover 104 million ha and present the average situati on in the mid-1980s. Most of the studies have used a static methodolog y to convert forest inventory data into carbon. Extrapolating those st udies to the total forest area of Europe (149 million ha) (excluding t he FSU), yields a whole tree carbon sink of 101.3 Tg C y(-1) (9.5% of the European emissions) and a whole tree carbon stock of 7929 Tg C. Al though in general the applied methodologies are comparable, they diffe r considerably in the way net fluxes are assessed and in the applied c onversion coefficients. The role of forest fires in the European fores t C balance might be larger than generally expected. A disadvantage of the static methodologies used is that they often regard only the fore st ecosystem part of the carbon cycle which may result in misleading r esults concerning the role of the total forest sector; another disadva ntage is that results are only valid for the year(s) on which the data are based. The second part of the paper discusses a methodology that could be applied to all national forests and forest sectors yielding m ore consistent results. The possibilities of using a large-scale fores try scenario model for a study on the present and future European fore st sector carbon balance are presented. (C) 1998 Published by Elsevier Science Ltd.