The recent outcomes of the COP21 negotiations in Paris and a range of national status reports on climate change vulnerabilities deliver a clear message to the scientific community and policy makers. We are in need of clean and renewable sources of energy and raw materials to move towards a bio-economy in various sectors. Since most renewable resources are available on the soil-atmosphere interface rather than belowground, we can expect major impacts on land use and therefore all related subsequent issues, such as biodiversity, environmental services etc. This applies especially to biomass production and utilization and therefore we would like to highlight potential benefits and challenges with increased biomass production on the environment.
This session is open to contributions assessing aspects of biomass production and utilization at different scales (e.g. local-global, national inventories), dealing with consequences of land-use change caused by increasing biomass production on environmental systems, such as biodiversity (e.g. species distribution and dynamics, invasive species, impacts on habitat quality) soils (nutrient depletion, acidification, carbon cycle), water (e.g. pollution, altering catchment water balances) and atmosphere (e.g. CO2 mitigation potentials, VOC’s emission of fast growing species, impact of urban biosphere on overall urban GHG emissions), the smart integration of different energy systems and the introduction of bio-products. Abstracts considering other major GHG’s beyond CO2, such as methane, nitrous oxide, and black carbon are also welcome. Contributions introducing theoretical concepts, models or the development of methods (also efforts towards sustainable biomass plantations, SRF) as well as interdisciplinary and holistic approaches and or examples, and research proposing alternative and /or cascade use of biomass are highly appreciated.
This session is organized and planned by the Commission for Interdisciplinary Ecological Studies and Commission Climate and Air Quality of the Austrian Academy of Sciences and co-organized with the IUFRO Task-Force “Sustainable Forest Biomass Network (SFBN)” and its working group 7.01.03, Impacts of air pollution and climate change on forest ecosystems – Atmospheric deposition, soils and nutrient cycles.