Sustainable forest biomass exploitation: An application of the CO2FIX model to Emilia-Romagna

Biomass from the forest sector can be an important source of renewable energy and can contribute to climate change mitigation and bioenergy development. However, the removal of biomass has significant impacts on the forest ecosystem. Our aim is to analyze alternatives of sustainable forest management and to compare how they perform in terms of carbon savings. The analysis is performed with CO2FIX, a well-known carbon accounting model. The model was applied to the forests of the Italian region Emilia-Romagna. The behaviour of the most important forest macro-categories is investigated under common management alternatives: no harvest, maintenance of a constant stock, different rotation lengths, and maximization of harvested biomass. We evaluate their impact at landscape level on the regional carbon budget.