The large carbon pools of the forests have a relatively significant importance for the Land Use, Land-Use Change, and Forestry (LULUCF) segment of the Danish emissions inventories and thereby the overall climate accounting. In order to navigate towards the objectives of the Danish climate goals, it is therefore necessary to know what emissions are expected from the forests.
Department of Geoscience and Natural Resource Management at University of Copenhagen has previously made various projections of the forest carbon pools in different contexts and with different assumptions to provide estimates of forest greenhouse gas emissions.
As a result of the diversity in the data used and the underlying assumptions, the projections have led to different results. The models have moreover been aimed at a long-term projection but have had difficulties in the short term in describing the actual development. There is thus a need for a renewed projection, which shows the expected development in the carbon pools up to 2025 and 2030 and reflects the recent years' development. Consequently, this project was initiated on an
assumption that a simplified projection of forest carbon pools focusing on 2025 and 2030 and linking to previous projections for the years up to 2040 would produce sufficiently accurate estimates. However, during the project it proved difficult to simplify calculations while still incorporating known changes in forest area, age and species distribution, and in forest management practices on areas set aside for biodiversity protection.
Because of issues arising from simplification of the projections it was decided to take on a, for Denmark, novel projection tool called EFISCEN-space. The EFISCEN (European Forest Information SCENario) model, specifically the EFISCEN-space variant, is a spatially explicit forest model developed to assess the future development of forests at regional to European scales. It simulates forest growth and dynamics based on inventory data and user-defined management rules,
allowing for the analysis of different forest management and policy scenarios. The model accounts for various factors such as age class distribution, volume, increment, and forest management practices, making it a useful tool for predicting forest growth, timber production, and carbon sequestration under various scenarios. The "space" component in EFISCEN-Space enhances the
model by incorporating spatially explicit information (i.e. plot locations), enabling more detailed analyses of spatial patterns and processes in forest ecosystems. The foundation for setting up the model was made on a study visit to Wageningen in November 2023.
Similarities and deviations from previous projections are described and justified in this report, and it is explained why the chosen projection method is expected to provide a more accurate projection towards and beyond 2030. The deliverable also includes a brief description of alternative projection models, based on preliminary work with a larger project about forecasts for the forests'
contributions to climate and climate accounts.