Agricultural Economy

Demand for wood products

The following categories of wood products are distinguished:

• Pulpwood and particles
• Saw logs, veneer and other industrial roundwood
• Fuel wood and charcoal.       

The demand for fuel wood and charcoal is assumed to be a fixed fraction of the demand for traditional biofuels, as computed by the energy model TIMER. Production of the other wood products is calculated on the basis of a statistical relationship between wood production, population growth, industrial value added and the availability of forests. This is described in detail by Alcamo et al. (1998) with updated parameters based on historical data from FAO.

This relationship is based on the following assumptions:

• The more people, the more timber products are consumed
• The higher the income, the higher the per capita consumption of timber, especially pulpwood and particles
• As timber prices increase, consumption decreases. The remaining forest area within a region is used as a rough surrogate of timber prices, with increasing prices and decreasing forest area.  
• Wood volumes are converted to weights on the basis of FAO conversion factors. The treatment of forests after wood extraction is described in the Land-Cover Model.     

Model links:

• to  Land-Cover Model (LCM)  
• to  Energy Demand and Supply Model (TIMER)       

Agricultural economy links:

• to  external references
• to  MNP references