Global wood production : assessment of industrial round wood supply from forest management systems in different global regions

To meet the global demand for wood the old forest management module of the IMAGE integrated assessment model (Bouwman et al. 2006) only applied clear felling. As a consequence in whole gird cells the forest was completely harvested. In reality, however, there many different ways to produce wood, ranging from selective logging to clear felling and forestry plantations. Each of these logging systems will have different effects on the area needed for wood production and impact on remaining forest and diversity patterns. The global biodiversity model GLOBIO (Alkemade et al. 2009), which is coupled to the IMAGE model, however, needs more precise information on area needed and differentiates in impact of different forest management types. In this report an overview is given of different forest management types (clear felling, selective felling, reduced impact logging and forest plantations) and the associated wood production and harvest losses on an area base in different climate zones (boreal, temperate and tropical). The data were collected form scientific and grey literature for a sample of 20 important wood producing countries across most world regions that are distinguished within the IMAGE model. Together these example countries covered 81.5% of the global industrial round wood production in 2005.