Innovative forest products in the circular bioeconomy.

Background: The forest-based industry has been moving towards the manufacture of bio-based products in response to the increasing concern by consumers and governments regarding the use of non-renewable materials and the generation of residues. Various innovative technologies geared towards reducing the environmental footprint of products and processes are currently being developed and applied in the forest-based industry. This study presents some innovative wood-based products that are about to enter the market or that are already being commercialized but have the potential to expand in market size. Methods: We collected data from interviews and a survey with organisations working with product development and manufacturing, and from the literature. Results: Many innovative products that are already produced at an industrial scale, such as cross-laminated timber, wood-based composites, and lyocell, can still increase their market share in the coming years. Some of the up-and-coming products with high potential to substitute fossil-based materials and will likely enter the market in the near future are wood foam, lignin-based adhesives, glycols, bioplastics, and textile fibres. Our study indicates that, although biomass demand is expected to increase, stakeholders do not consider future supply a limiting factor. Conclusions: The ease of market introduction of innovative products relies heavily on the products' ability to take advantage of existing value chains. Overall, many of the reviewed products have the advantage of being 'drop-in'. This is because products that require adjustments to production lines are less likely to get into the market without strong external drivers that push for bio-based alternatives. According to stakeholders, the economic viability and the market expansion of these products could be encouraged to a certain extent by EU policies, and certain barriers could be alleviated by reducing bureaucracy, increasing the support for pilot-scale to full-scale production, and increasing subsidies for bio-based alternatives.

Trade-offs between forest protection and wood supply in Europe.

Forest protection is one of the main measures to prevent loss of biological and landscape diversity. This study aimed to assess to what extent forests are currently protected and how felling restrictions affect the potential annual wood supply within 27 European Union member states, Norway, and Switzerland and to discuss trade-offs between intensified use of forest biomass and forest protection efforts. Protected forests covered 33 million ha (20% of total forest area) in 2005, of which 16 million ha was protected for biodiversity and the remaining area for landscape diversity. Within the protected areas, on average 48% of the volume cannot be harvested in forests protected for biodiversity and 40% in forests protected for landscapes. Consequently, 73 million m(3) (10% of the annual theoretical potential supply from the total forest area) of wood cannot be felled from the protected forests in Europe. Protected forests do not necessarily affect wood supply given the current demand for wood in Europe. However, if demand for wood from European forests for material and energy use significantly increases, the impact of existing protected forest networks may become significant after all. On the other hand, wood harvesting is allowed to a fair extent in many protected areas. Hence, the question could be raised whether biodiversity and landscape diversity within designated areas are sufficiently protected. Careful planning is required to accommodate both the protection of biological and landscape diversity and demand for wood, while not forgetting all other services that forests provide.

Increasing forest disturbances in Europe and their impact on carbon storage.

Disturbances from wind, bark beetles, and wildfires have increased in Europe's forests throughout the 20th century 1. Climatic changes were identified as a main driver behind this increase 2, yet how the expected continuation of climate change will affect Europe's forest disturbance regime remains unresolved. Increasing disturbances could strongly impact the forest carbon budget 3,4, and are hypothesized to contribute to the recently observed carbon sink saturation in Europe's forests 5. Here we show that forest disturbance damage in Europe has continued to increase in the first decade of the 21st century. Based on an ensemble of climate change scenarios we find that damage from wind, bark beetles, and forest fires is likely to increase further in coming decades, and estimate the rate of increase to +0.91·106 m3 of timber per year until 2030. We show that this intensification can offset the effect of management strategies aiming to increase the forest carbon sink, and calculate the disturbance-related reduction of the carbon storage potential in Europe's forests to be 503.4 Tg C in 2021-2030. Our results highlight the considerable carbon cycle feedbacks of changing disturbance regimes, and underline that future forest policy and management will require a stronger focus on disturbance risk and resilience.

Challenges and opportunities in mapping land use intensity globally.

Future increases in land-based production will need to focus more on sustainably intensifying existing production systems. Unfortunately, our understanding of the global patterns of land use intensity is weak, partly because land use intensity is a complex, multidimensional term, and partly because we lack appropriate datasets to assess land use intensity across broad geographic extents. Here, we review the state of the art regarding approaches for mapping land use intensity and provide a comprehensive overview of available global-scale datasets on land use intensity. We also outline major challenges and opportunities for mapping land use intensity for cropland, grazing, and forestry systems, and identify key issues for future research.