The Research Of Annual Carbon Storage Of Harvest Wood Products And Its Trade Impact In China

Global warming has caused global attention. As the demand of harvest wood products isgetting bigger, the harvest wood products have very important significance in the global carbonbalance. The role of harvest wood products for climate change mitigation is carbon storage andreducing emissions. The hysteresis effect of carbon emissions decides that the harvest woodproducts are carbon pools. The harvest wood products have big effects in reducing carbonemissions, especially in energy and building department. The substitute for fossil fuel and moreenergy-intensive materials can reduce CO2emissions and mitigate climate change.In this paper, IPCC default approach, Stock-change approach and Atmospheric-flowapproach provided by IPCC Guidelines are used to estimate the annually carbon storage changeof harvest wood products of China in the year1900to2010(data of1900-1960is based on1961).The IPCC default approach assumes that the carbon in the wood harvested release to the airimmediately, so the carbon storage is zero. From the angle of total amount, the carbon storage ofharvest wood products is6.98and5.11hundred million tons carbon in2010using the SCA andAFA approaches. The former approach has1.87hundred million tons carbon more than the latter.From the angle of annually growth, the result of the two approaches is6.29and4.60million tonscarbon in1900-2010. The former approach has1.69million tons carbon more than the latter. Theimport wood carbon is assumed to be included in the storage of our country using the SCAapproach, and the trade of carbon storage is about quarter of the total. So the result shows that theSCA approach is more beneficial to our country than the AFA approach. Contrast to the forestcarbon storage in the same period (1973-2003), the proportion of carbon storage in the harvestwood products is4.91%-9.09%. The average is about7%. Contrast to the data of CO2emissionsfrom the consumption of energy provided by U.S. Energy Information Administration, the carbonstorage in the harvest wood products can reduce0.5%of total emissions. The carbon storage ofharvest wood products in our country has some potential ability in carbon emissions reduce.Finally, the paper gives some management strategy to improve the role of harvest woodproducts for climate change mitigation. We can improve the utilization of wood harvested andextend the life of wood product by new technology to enhance the carbon storage effect ofharvest wood products. The substitute for fossil fuel and more energy-intensive materials canreduce the emissions of greenhouse gas. Of course, the materials of harvest wood productsshould be from a sustainable forest. By the use of these measures, it can improve the role ofharvest wood products for climate change mitigation in a certain extent.