20 years of life cycle assessment (LCA) in the forestry sector: state of the art and a methodical proposal for the LCA of forest production

摘要

Life cycle assessment (LCA) techniques have been developed since the late 1960s in order to analyze environmental impacts of various products or companies. Although LCA techniques of forest production have been already conducted since the early 1990s, consistent and comprehensive LCA studies are still lacking for the forestry sector. In order to support better comparability between LCA studies, we analyzed the problems and differences by conducting a descriptive and quantitative analysis of existing LCA studies of forest production with special focus on Global Warming Potential (GWP).