Advanced LCA methods for sustainable timber solutions: A review

Climate change is making natural disturbances, such as droughts, storms and insect outbreaks, more frequent, causing major impacts on forest ecosystem services, and in some cases causing ecosystem collapse. Forest management techniques used to maximise timber production, resulting in single species, even-aged stands, make forests more vulnerable to disturbances. Consideration is being given as to how to manage forests more sustainably, to preserve, for example, carbon stocks, biodiversity and the future supply of timber. Standard LCA methods are insufficient to assess the broader local negative impacts and co-benefits of alternative management techniques when assessing timber production. This study reviews more advanced academic research-based LCA methods to assess the land use impacts of timber, to determine to what extent timber products with different provenances can be compared. The review focused on biogenic carbon and biodiversity, as well as broader impacts such as on society. It was found that advanced methods exist to better capture the impact forest land use has on carbon flows and biodiversity, although these methods are yet to be used together. The advanced methods identified to improve the assessment of non-environmental impacts however lacked the resolution needed to meaningfully compare different forests. Therefore alternative approaches are suggested.