Environmental assessment of different harvesting solutions for Short Rotation Coppice plantations

Although several studies have been carried out on Short Rotation Coppice (SRC) plantations and on their environmental performances, there is a lack of information about the environmental impact of the harvesting operations. In this study, using LCA approach, the environmental performance of two different harvesting solutions for Short Rotation Coppice plantations was evaluated. In more details, for 2-years cutting time poplar plantations, harvesting with a self-propelled forager equipped with a specific header was compared in terms of environmental impact with a tractor-based solution. The LCI was built with experimental data collected during field tests carried out over about 70ha of SRC plantation in Northern Italy. The following nine impact potentials were evaluated according to the selected method: climate change (CC), ozone depletion (OD), particulate matter (PM), photochemical ozone formation (POF), acidification (TA), freshwater eutrophication (FE), terrestrial eutrophication (TE), marine eutrophication (ME) and mineral, fossil and renewable resource depletion (MFRD). Although harvesting with self-propelled foragers requires higher power and higher diesel consumption, it achieves better environmental performances respect to the harvest with the tractor-based solution. The tractor-based option is characterized by lower operative field capacity (about - 70% for all the evaluated impact categories except for MFRD, which is - 94% compared to the first option). The environmental differences are mainly related to the different machine productivity. From an environmental point of view, respect to the harvesting with self-propelled foragers, the tractor-based solution can achieve a lower environmental impact only in small SRC plantations (<1-2ha).