Developing environmentally sustainable forestry value chains

森林在气候调节、水净化和生物多样性保护方面发挥着关键作用，同时提供对循环经济至关重要的可再生木材资源。英国的森林覆盖率是欧洲平均水平的三分之一，英国退欧后可能进行的农业补贴改革可能会为林业扩张创造实质性的动力。在林地建立和管理方法方面，这种扩张对更广泛的环境后果的证据基础仍然不完整。还需要更准确地计算采伐木材产品中的碳固存，并计算可归因于用木材替代混凝土和化石燃料等高影响产品而产生的环境“信用”。这些影响将在一段较长的时间内对高级价值链产生，这些价值链涉及主要木材原料的级联使用，例如从建筑开始，最终以燃料使用--木质颗粒或生物乙醇--为终点。这个令人兴奋的学生将开发最先进的生命周期评估(LCA)模型，将林地管理的生态数据与产品加工和产品替代的技术经济数据相结合，以回答以下问题：在边缘土地上建立林地会对环境产生什么影响，特别是对温室气体通量、碳固定、养分损失和生物多样性的影响？与替代的传统产品相比，创新的木材衍生产品的环境足迹如何？为了解决这些问题，该项目将通过量化生命周期温室气体缓解潜力和在不涉及农业的土地上扩大林业可能带来的环境共同效益，为正在进行的关于“节约土地”的科学辩论做出重大贡献。

Forests play a key role in climate regulation, water purification and biodiversity conservation, whilst providing renewable wood-based resources critical for the circular economy. Forest cover in the UK is one third of the European average, and possible post-Brexit reform of agricultural subsidies could create substantial impetus for forestry expansion. There remains an incomplete evidence base on the wider environmental consequences of such expansion in relation to methods of woodland establishment and management. There is also a need to more accurately account for carbon sequestration in harvested wood products, and to calculate environmental "credits" attributable to substitution of wood for high-impact products such as concrete and fossil fuels. These effects will arise over an extended time period for advanced value chains involving cascading uses of the primary wood feedstock, e.g. starting with construction and culminating in fuel use -as wood pellets or bioethanol. This exciting studentship will develop state-of-the-art of life cycle assessment (LCA) models to integrate ecological data on forestry land management with techno-economic data on product processing and product substitution to answer the following questions: What are the environmental consequences of woodland establishment on marginal land, with particular emphasis on greenhouse gas fluxes, carbon sequestration, nutrient losses and biodiversity? How do environmental footprints of innovative wood-derived products compare with substituted conventional products?In addressing these questions, the project will make a significant contribution to the ongoing scientific debate about "land sparing", by quantifying life cycle GHG mitigation potential and possible environmental co-benefit of forestry expansion on land "spared" from agriculture.