Forest Bioenergy and Biodiversity Nexus

Dear Colleagues,

Forest bioenergy is peculiar among other renewable energy sources because it sits at the nexus of two of the main environmental crises of the 21^st century: the climate and biodiversity emergencies. Bioenergy technologies, including forest-based bioenergy, indeed are promoted within European legislation as a necessary and crucial part of the EU climate change mitigation strategies. While certain forest bioenergy pathways may have the potential to provide part of the solution for climate change mitigation while using woody biomass produced without causing deforestation, degradation of habitats, or loss of biodiversity, other forest bioenergy pathways may cause significant trade-offs or even exacerbate both crises.

This is especially worrying since forest ecosystems, in Europe and worldwide, are largely in poor ecological conditions and under worsening stressors. Therefore, it is crucial to scrutinize in details the potential changes to forest management that an increasing forest bioenergy demand may cause.  Bio-perversity is defined as “the negative biodiversity and environmental outcomes arising from a narrow policy and management focus on single environmental problems without consideration of the broader ecological context” (Lindenmayer et al., 2012) [1]. One of the goals of this special Issue is indeed to provide decisionmakers with evidence to avoid allowing and promoting bio-perversities.

The role of forest bioenergy in climate change mitigation has been debated at length, conversely, the potential impacts of forest bioenergy expansion on biodiversity and ecosystems’ condition health has received much less attention so far, and it is thus the main subject of this Special Issue.

In this special issue we invite contributions with the following goal:

• Assess the potential impacts of forest bioenergy pathways on forest ecosystems, highlight risks and define governance tools to mitigate them.

The scope of the contributions invited is the following:

• Geographical scale: all forest biomes, from national, regional, and sub-regional scales;
• Impact categories considered: any attribute to define Ecosystems’ condition is of interest, but with preference to biodiversity attributes, i.e.:
  • Structural ecosystem attributes (e.g. deadwood quantity, forest fragmentation etc…)
  • Structural ecosystem attributes based on species diversity and abundance (e.g. see the Essential Biodiversity Variables classes)
  • Structural soil attributes (e.g. SOC, soil PH, soil bulk density, soil erodability etc..)
  • Functional ecosystem attributes (e.g. Evapotranspiration)
  • Functional soil attributes (e.g. Nutrient availability, water availability etc…)

Assessment of trade-offs and synergies among multiple environmental impact categories, including climate change (e.g. win-win, lose-lose pathways), are welcome.

• Types of study considered: many different types of research studies are invited for this special issue, such as:
  • Product-based LCAs;
  • Integrated assessment models;
  • Empirical research related to bioenergy pathways;
  • Case-studies (empirical – modelled – literature based) at local spatial scales;
  • Literature reviews;
  • Policy / Governance tools and recommendations;
  • Commentaries and perspectives.

References:

1. Lindemayer, D.B. et al. (2012). Avoiding bio-perversity from carbon sequestration solutions. Conservation Letters 5:28-36.

Dr. Jacopo Giuntoli
Dr. Alessandro Agostini
Guest Editors

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• Forest ecosystems
• Biodiversity
• Bioenergy
• Environmental impacts
• LCA
• Climate change mitigation
• Ecosystem condition