Assessment of forest biomass and carbon stocks at stand level using site-specific primary data to support forest management

-Introduction • Quantification and mapping of forest Ecosystem Services (ESs) is essential to identify effective forest management practices and to support environmental institutions in the decision-making processes; • To mitigate climate change, the most important forest ESs are: (i) carbon stock and (ii) woody biomasssupply; • The use of models based on site-specific primary (measured) data collected in Forest Management Plans (FMPs) is essential to support the sustainable forest management. General objectives • To develop a model to quantify and map (1) carbon stock (ES1) and (2) woody biomass extracted from the forests (ES2) at stand level using site-specific primary data: 1.ES1 (modeling of carbon dynamics in forest): to calculate the mass of carbon (t·year-1) stocked in different pools over time according to the forest management practices; 2.ES2 (analysis of woody biomass harvesting chains): to calculate the mass (tDM·year-1) of different woody assortments extracted from the forest over time and economic (€·tDM-1) and environmental costs (tCO2eq·tDM-1) of the machinery chains. Materials and methods Results Development of an interactive model for multi-level forest management. Direct users will be Mountains Communities (U1) and supply chain operators i.e. forestry enterprises (U2) Regarding U1: information about woody biomass (and C) and its evolution over time will be provided to support sustainable and multifunctional planning and management; regarding U2: indications to minimize the economic and environmental costs of woody biomass production will be provided to promote a greater use of local forestry resources.