Carbon balance and Life Cycle Assessment in an oak plantation for mined area reclamation

Abstract The studied plantation is a post-mining site located in Central Italy, between Firenze and Arezzo as a part of an activity of land reclamation and re-establishment of native plant species focus on ecosystem restoration of an area where lignite was extracted since 1863. In the 1980’s once the mining activity ceased, an afforestation activity was started on 1287 ha using several indigenous species. This research work focused on a plantation of English oak (Quercus robur L.), planted in November 1979 on a homogeneous mine spoil bank with an initial density of 1111 trees ha−1, gradually reduced to 157 trees ha−1 in February 2014. The carbon sequestered by the oak plantation biomass, during the whole life spam, was calculated and the environmental impact (in terms of global warming) due to management operations were measured through a Life Cycle Assessment on the basis of its international references (i.e. ISO 14040 and ISO 14044, 2006). Thus both human and biological processes were investigated to get respective CO2-eq sources and sinks. The actual carbon stock and the age beyond which cumulated removals exceed emissions were determined. In addition, the “hotspots” in the life cycle, i.e. treatments and processes that had the greater impacts were found. The estimated standing total C at 34 years old was 92.623 t ha−1, that correspond at a total CO2-eq of 339.925 t ha−1. The studied plantation English oak shows high growth performance in the 34th years after planting and low Carbon footprint, with CO2-eq absorption being higher than CO2-eq emissions since the 4th year after planting.