Welcome to EU28-ForestMng-Climate

This is the github repository of the open access research article

Can Forest Management Practices Counteract Species Loss Arising from Increasing European Demand for Forest Biomass under Climate Mitigation Scenarios?

Francesca Rosa, Fulvio Di Fulvio, Pekka Lauri, Adam Felton, Nicklas Forsell, Stephan Pfister, Stefanie Hellweg

Environmental Science and Technology, 2023

https://doi.org/10.1021/acs.est.2c07867

This repository contains the data and the scripts used to perform the analyses, the results obtained, the aggregated values and the plots.

Abstract

Forests are home to many species and provide biomass for material and energy. Here, we modeled the potential global species extinction risk from future scenarios of climate mitigation and EU28 forest management. We considered the continuation of current practices, the adoption of closer-to-nature management (low-intensity practices), and set-asides (conversion to unharvested forestland) on portions of EU28 forestland under two climate mitigation pathways as well as the consequences for the wood trade. Expanding set-aside to more than 25% of EU28 currently managed forestland by 2100 increased the global extinction risk compared to the continuation of current practices. This outcome stems from a projected increase in EU forest biomass imports, partially from biodiversity-vulnerable regions to compensate for a decrease in domestic harvest. Conversely, closer-to-nature management on up to 37.5% of EU28 forestland lowered extinction risks. Increasing the internal production and partially sourcing imported biomass from low-intensity managed areas lowered the species extinction footprint even further. However, low-intensity practices could not entirely compensate for the increased extinction risk under a high climate mitigation scenario with greater demand for lignocellulosic crops and energywood. When developing climate mitigation strategies, it is crucial to assess forest biomass supply chains for the early detection of extinction risks in non-EU regions and for developing strategies to prevent increase of global impacts.

Keywords

biodiversity, species richness, biodiversity footprint, life cycle thinking, bioeconomy, land use, leakage effects, closer-to-nature forests, set-aside, wood trade

Structure of the folders in the repository

Overview

data: Data on land use (areas) and on ecoregions (e.g., original species number) used in the model. It contains two subfolders: land_use_data and model_parameters

scripts: All scripts used in the project, except the main.R, which is in the head folder.

results: .csv files containing the absolute values of extinction risks for the various scenarios.

aggregation_plotting: Aggregated results and plots of the results.

archived: Folders and files used for testing and eventually not included in the final version of the manuscript.

demo: Folder containing scripts and template files which allow the user to calculate the extinction risk in PDF using his/her area data.

Detailed description of the folders

data

data/model_parameters/ecoregions_data

This folder contains the raw and processed data used to obtain the input parameters for the model, namely the response ratios (rr), the z values, the original number of species, the weighting factors and the vulnerability scores (VS).

Files:

• .csv files providing i) the description of the ecoregions and the relative data, ii) the ecoregions included in GLOBIOM iii) the local Characterization factors (used to obtain the response ratios) iv) the z values to be used in the model.
• A readme.md file with a further detailed description of the .csv files.

Folders (see the readme.md file in each folder for further details):

• z_analysis: it contains the raw files then processed to obtain the z values used as input in the model for the calculation of the impacts and some analyses.
• rr_zz (rr = response ratio): it contains the data on response ratios and z values used as input in the model for the calculation of the impacts. The files result from the application of the functions in scripts/model/parameters_calculation.R, scripts/model/bootstrapping.R and scripts/data_preparation to the .csv files in data/model_parameters/ecoregions_data/.
• VS (VS = vulnerability scores): it contains the raw and processed files used to obtain the VS (vulnerability scores) for plants usign the scripts scripts/VS_plants.R.

data/land_use_data

This folder contains the raw data from GLOBIOM on areas and biomass harvested, as well as the .csv files prepared to be used in the processing function that tidies and matches the areas (scripts/data_preparation/do_tidy_match.R).

Folders (see the readme.md file in each folder for further details):

• areas_base: it contains the raw data from GLOBIOM on areas and biomass harvested, as well as the .csv files prepared to be used in the processing function that tidies and matches the areas (scripts/data_preparation/do_tidy_match.R).
• areas_processed: it contains the results of the process used to match the areas of the two GLOBIOM models: the main model which projects global future land use and a model specific for EU internal wood and energy crops production and EU forest biomass import and export, as described in the maniscript. The scripts used to produce the areas are in scripts/data_preparation and are called in the section "Preparation of the areas" in the file main.R

scripts

Files:

• readme.md: file describing the folder content in further detail.
• set_directories.R: script called in main.R that creates variables containing the paths to folders/files (e.g. the path to the results, to the plots, to the aggregated data, etc).
• create_directories: script called in main.R that creates the needed directories if they do not exist already (e.g., where the results are stored).
• scripts_functions_input_output.xlsx: excel file with the list of scripts, functions, data input and output.
• scripts_functions_input_output.pdf: .pdf file created with scripts_functions_input_output.xlsx.

Folders (see the readme.md file in scripts/ for further details):

• data_preparation: scripts used to tidy up and match the data on the area and to calculate the model parameters used as input in the model. The input and output of these scripts are in the folder data/

• model: scripts that take the output of the functions in data_preparation/ as input and calculate the extinction risk per year, scenario, land use and ecoregion and to store the results in the folder results/.

• aggregation: scripts that take the files in results/ as input and aggregate them (e.g. summing the impacts over ecoregions). The output of these scripts is saved in aggregation_plotting/.

• plotting: scripts used to plot the values of the .csv files in results/ or in aggregation_plotting/; the plots are saved in aggregation_plotting/.

• archived: folder containing material used for testing and eventually not included in the final version of the manuscript.

results

Files:

• readme.md: file describing the folder content in further detail.

Folders:

The folders in this path contain the extinction risk calculated at ecoregion resolution, per each scenario and land use types usign the scrips in the folder scripts/model that are called in the main.R file.
Labeling of the folders:

• Baseline, SharedEffort or LowerIntensity: scenario to which the results belong.
• timber = EU timber plantations have been included.
• cutoff = response ratios larger than 1 converted to 1.
• bs or static = confidence interval calculated with bootstrapping or are not calculated.

aggregation_plotting

Files:

• readme.md: file describing the folder content in further detail.

Folders:

• areas/: it contains the files created by the scripts aggregate_areas.R and areas_Rdata-to-csv.R and the relative plots.
• archived/: folder containing material used for testing and eventually not included in the final version of the manuscript.
• The other folders containing the aggregated values and plotting of the extinction risk. Each of these folders contains multiple sub-folders corresponding to the multiple scenarios, where the aggregated results and the plots are stores. Each sub-folder contains:
  • an .Rdata file with the aggregated results output of the script aggregate_results.R.
  • A folder called csv/ which contains the .csv files of the aggregated results created by EU_Rdata-to-csv.R.
  • A folder called plots/ with the plots and maps created by the scripts in scripts/plotting.