Biomass Burning and Carbon Losses in Different EU
         Countries; An Empirical Research - Abstract

           Eleni Zafeiriou1, Garyfallos Arabatzis2 and Stavros Tsiantikoudis3


  1
   Associate Professor, Dept. of Agricultural Development, Democritus University of Thrace,
                            Greece; e-mail: ezafeir@agro.duth.gr
   2
    Professor, Dept. of Forestry and Management of the Environment and Natural Resources,
                          Democritus University of Thrace, Greece
    3
     Dr. Forester – Environmentalist, Dept. of Forestry and Management of the Environment
              and Natural Resources, Democritus University of Thrace, Greece



Summary

   The issue of climate change has received high interest within the last few decades
as well as its impacts. An aspect of climate change issue is the interaction of climate
change with forest fires. More specifically, the increasing frequency in forest fires as
well the increasing burned area is a major determinant in carbon losses (Turesky
et.al, 2011).
   Additionally the impact of wildfires on carbon emissions is also affected by the
severity of burning. The way climate change affects the severity of biomass burning
caused by fires presents difficulties in assessment (Charnley ey.al, 2017).
   Previous modeling results in the existing literature suggest that increasing fire
frequency in regions has a serious impact on forest composition, while it increases
greenhouse-gas emissions, and serves as a main determinant of carbon balances.
However, the net effect of burning on carbon stocks is determined by both fire
frequency and severity, and the consequences of climate changes in rates of lost
biomass consumption are uncertain.
   Based on the above and having in mind the particularities of different countries in
EU the present manuscript tries to estimate behavior of carbon losses by forest per
hectare of burned area for four countries with different soil and weather conditions.
The data of burning loss and burned area were derived by FAOSTAT. In particular
having calculated the burning loss in terms of carbon emissions storage per hectare
of burned area we employed different panel unit root tests including those of Im
Pesaran and Shin (2003), or Breitung (2000; Breitung and Das 2005), Levin–Lin–
Chu (2002), Im–Pesaran–Shin (2003), and Fisher-type (Choi 2001) tests have as the
null hypothesis that all the panels contain a unit root.
   The countries in our sample involve Greece, Italy and Spain, three Mediterranean
countries, and Austria a country with significant forest cover area and totally
different climatic conditions. The time period studied involves almost three decades
(1990-2017).




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   The major objective of our study was to estimate the behavior of carbon losses by
forest per hectare of burned area for four countries with different soil and weather
conditions. With the assistance of different panel unit root tests having rejected the
unit root hypothesis we may well argue that we have evidence that a statistically
significant proportion of the units are stationary. Therefore the behavior of biomass
loss is a variable that need to be further studied in order the determinants of its
behavior to be identified and to enable policy makers to reverse the existing situation.
The results are indicative of potential problems in forest management that actually
are different for each country while policy implications are derived. The policies and
programs Development aiming to support the use of prescribed fire on lands and in
particular surface soil treatments may provide an efficient and economic tool to
reduce fire hazard for all the economic agents.
   Resilience, a significant reaction of fire forest ecosystems to high – severity
wildfire, has important socioeconomic implications such as, protection of homes and
structures, protection of timber assets and production, protection of scenic quality
and recreation opportunities, and protection of certain ecological values (Charnley
et.al, 2017).
   Last but certainly not least is the notion that wildfire is a landscape-scale
disturbance process and, therefore coordinated activities are essential aiming to
combine to alter landscape-scale conditions. More specifically, strengthening the
collaborations and encouraging interaction between forest and fire management
networks may be vital for local actors to build and improve their capacity to manage
forestlands for wildfire resilience.

       Keywords: biomass; forest fires; carbon losses; climate change; panel unit
       root test.

       JEL Codes: Q54.




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