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Assessment of Impacts of Extreme Winter Storms on the Forest Resources in Baden-Württemberg - a Combined Spatial and System Dynamics Approach

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Assessment of Impacts of Extreme Winter Storms on the Forest Resources in Baden-Württemberg - a Combined Spatial and System Dynamics Approach Assessment of Impacts of Extreme Winter Storms on the Forest Resources in Baden-Württemberg - A Combined Spatial and System Dynamics Approach Zur Erlangung des akademischen Grades eines Doktors der Wirtschaftswissenschaften (Dr. rer. pol.) von der Fakultät für Wirtschaftswissenschaften des Karlsruher Instituts für Technologie (KIT) genehmigte DISSERTATION von (M.Sc.) Syed Monjur Murshed ______________________________________________________________ Tag der mündlichen Prüfung: 08.07.2016 Referent: Prof. Dr. Ute Werner Korreferent: Prof. Dr. Ute Karl Karlsruhe 21.11.2016 This document is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution – Share Alike 3.0 DE License (CC BY-SA 3.0 DE): http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/de/ Acknowledgement First of all, I would like to express my profound gratitude to my thesis supervisor Prof. Dr. Ute Werner for her excellent guidance, patience, granting the consent to explore the research topics on my own, as well as providing thoughtful advice throughout the long journey of this thesis. I am also grateful to Prof. Dr. Ute Karl for providing suggestions on the improvement of the manuscript and agreeing to co‐ supervise the thesis. I wish to further thank numerous present and past colleagues in the European Institute for Energy Research (EIFER) and Électricité de France (EDF SA) for their encouragement and support. My particular gratitude towards Ludmilla Gauter, Nurten Avci, Andreas Koch, Jean Copreaux, Pablo Viejo for their belief in me and allowing me to attend seminars at the university, as well as allocating dedicated time to work on the thesis. Susanne Schmidt, Francisco Marzabal gave valuable insights into the system dynamics modelling approach and its formulation, for which I am extremely grateful. I would like to direct my gratitude to all the students with whom I have worked with, especially Eric Reed, who provided essential contributions into the vulnerability assessment. My sincere gratitude extends to Herr Bernd Struck, deputy head of the Forest Department of the city of Karlsruhe and senior forester in Karlsruhe Bergwald, and his colleagues, who gave valuable insights into the practical aspects of forest management and salvage operations observed in the state of Baden‐Württemberg. His support came through many other ways, e.g., organising a field trip to the storm affected areas in the Northern Black Forest, participation in workshops, and providing related data. Furthermore, during visits to the Forest Department of the district Freundenstadt and Gaiser Karl & Sohn GmbH in Baiersbronn, they also explained the practical insights into the regional wood flows, wood market and prices, for which I am very thankful. I am grateful to all the members of the NatKat group of KIT, especially Dietmar Borst, for their valuable suggestions into this multi‐disciplinary research topic. I would like to thank Dr. Axel Albrecht and Prof. Dr. Ulrich Kohnle of the Forest Research Institute of Baden‐Württemberg (FVA) for their recommendations on modelling of windthrow vulnerability, as well as PD Dr. Michael Kunz of the Institute for Meteorology and Climate Research, KIT and Tomas Hoffherr of Munich Re Group for i Acknowledgement explaining the issues related to the winter storm hazard modelling and allowing to use related data. Furthermore, I warmly thank Emma Alice Smith for proof‐reading the manuscript. I extend sincere gratefulness to my family members and friends for their continuous inspiration and unconditional assistance throughout my life, so far. Finally, I would like to express my heartfelt gratitude to my wife Mahfuza Murshed for her patience and support to complete the thesis. ii Dedication I would like to dedicate this thesis to my parents, both of whom rest in peace since 2014. iii Abstract This research investigates the impacts of extreme winter storms on the forest resources in the federal state of Baden‐Württemberg in Germany. Such analyses can help private and public forest owners to identify whether and how much of their forest is vulnerable. It also allows them to understand what possible economic consequences might arise as a result of their decisions on forest management and salvage operations, considering the subsequent market conditions after the storm. A standing forest provides a wide variety of direct and indirect benefits to society. It is of paramount importance for climate protection, as it supplies renewable wood materials that contribute to the transition to renewable energies (Energiewende in Germany) and absorbs carbon dioxide. However, extreme events, e.g., winter storms occur with greater intensity than before, which may cause increased associated costs of forest management. Forests in Baden‐Württemberg have been hit by extreme winter storms which damaged the trees, destroyed roads and other infrastructure. Appropriate decision support tools, considering a combination of space and time, are largely missing in forest management practices. Such accessible knowledge would help the decision makers to evaluate their strategic decisions in the aftermath of a storm. In this regard, development of a combined spatial and system dynamics modelling approach can help to synthesize and advance theories of forest economics, as well as simulate forest management related practices in order to analyse the impacts of extreme winter storms on forest resources. Within this research, two models are therefore developed, in order to achieve these objectives. The first Weight of Evidence (WofE) model is based on a combined Geographic Information System (GIS) and statistical analyses to illustrate the most vulnerable forest areas in the federal state of Baden‐Württemberg. Multiple model runs with different combinations of factors are performed to evaluate and validate the reliability of the results. The outcome of the WofE model is used as an input into a system dynamics model ‐ which is based on dynamic feedback structures and economic theories ‐ to evaluate the economic impacts of a stochastic winter storm, under different forest management and salvage operation decisions. The model is able to demonstrate the v Abstract changes in impacts over time across all of the districts, as the model components constantly evolve due to previous feedback actions and conditions. The most significant WofE‐model (M8) identifies that the soil type, forest type, topographic exposure in the direction of west and gust wind speed greater than 35 m/s are the most important determinants in windthrow assessment. The WofE methodology produces a raster grid with cells in a one ha unit area representing the posterior probabilities of damage due to a stochastic winter storm for approximately 14 million ha of forests in the state of Baden‐Württemberg. About 18% of the forest area is identified as highly vulnerable, whereas 20% of the area lies within the moderately vulnerable areas. However, the majority of the forests (62%) are within the lowest vulnerable areas. In terms of spatial patterns, the forests towards the west ‐ where topographic exposure values are high, soil is acidic and forests are coniferous ‐ are mostly vulnerable. The districts of Calw, Freudenstadt, Breisgau‐Hochschwarzwald, Ortenaukreis and Schwarzwald‐Baar‐ Kreis are found to be the most vulnerable districts in Baden‐Württemberg. The system dynamics modelling approach is formulated considering the state of the art of modelling paradigms and a theoretical framework. The forestry sector is divided into five submodels (regarding salvage price, salvage value, standing timber value, forest clearing area value, and pre‐storm timber value submodel) and the reference simulations of these submodels are run in all the 44 districts in Baden‐ Württemberg. The reference simulation runs aim to promote an understanding of the dynamic properties of the multidimensional and interdisciplinary aspects of the model, since different districts accommodate varying forest resources and are impacted differently by the stochastic winter storm. The net value i.e., positive or negative cash flows, in these submodels or in total, can thus be calculated and compared ‐ at different simulation years or by discounting back the future values at present time. Two policy based scenarios ‐ immediate salvage operation and delayed salvage operation ‐ are proposed to ascertain the likely impacts due to alternative salvage operation strategies. The immediate salvage operation proves to be profitable, compared to the reference scenarios and delayed salvage operation. However, the delayed salvage operation policy offers environmental and ecological benefits which are difficult to quantify in terms of monetary values. Yet, it is evident that although the extreme storm initially offers positive cash flows, it has a long term negative impact. vi Abstract The model is also validated with a set of structural and behaviour tests, as suggested by the system dynamics literature and best practices. Finally, four sensitivity analyses are performed to identify the effect of some of the most important parameters. The price elasticity of demand and the discount rate selected showed significant influence on the model results. For example, an increase of demand elasticity from ‐0.5 to +0.5, reduces the salvage price by around 67% in the fourth year, and a decrease of elasticity to ‐1 increases the price by 20%. Therefore, knowing the possible future impacts, private and public forest owners and decision makers would be able to organize marketing strategies in order to control the sale
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