Nicolas RobertEuropean Commission | ec · Joint Research Centre (JRC)
Nicolas Robert
PhD
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47
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Publications (47)
Forest ecosystems provide numerous services that contribute to the wellbeing of societies. However, the lack of knowledge about the benefits of non-wood forest ecosystem services, such as non-wood forest products (NWFPs), hinders efficient forest policy decision-making processes. This study proposes a new extension of the Social Accounting Matrices...
Forests are under pressure to provide biomass for different uses, but also to mitigate climate change and house biodiversity. In the EU, there is an intense debate around which functions to prioritize, and the role of scientists is increasingly critical in the quest for policy coherence.
Non-Wood Forest Products (NWFPs) provide social and cultural services related to e.g., the tradition and social role of collecting berries, mushrooms and herbs. These services can be ranked among intangible outputs as a part of the recreational function of forests. However, their social value is only partially captured in non-forest activities. We...
Climate and other human-induced changes will increase water scarcity in world areas such as in the Mediterranean. Adaptation principles need to be urgently incorporated into water management and stakeholder engagement needs to be strengthened at all steps of the management cycle. This study aimed to analyse and compare stakeholder-preferred water m...
The EU Bioeconomy Monitoring System is pursuant to the Action 3.3.2 of the EU Bioeconomy Strategy (COM/2018/673). It addresses the need for a comprehensive monitoring system by establishing a mechanism to measure the progress of the EU bioeconomy towards the five strategic objectives it tackles. It defines and implements a comprehensive monitoring...
In the report on the use of woody biomass for energy production in the EU, written under the auspices of the Biodiversity for 2030 Strategy, JRC scientists analyse the sources and trends as well as sustainability pathways for the use of woody biomass for bioenergy in the EU that could mitigate climate change while maintaining or improving forest bi...
Human interactions with forests span over ages. Forests have served as a source of food, shelter, and wood for various purposes. Though progress in technologies and urbanisation have reduced the dependence of people on food from forests, forests still generate job opportunities and income, as well as provide many other ecosystem services, including...
The demand for wood-based energy is foreseen to grow as energy and climate policies around the world promote the use of bioenergy for climate change mitigation. However, the carbon impacts of forest bioenergy range widely in the literature. The value-choices made on the response of forest management to bioenergy demand have a major influence on the...
This study adds to the scientific literature dealing with the climate change mitigation implications of wood substitution. Its main scientific contribution rests with the modelling approach. By fully integrating forest resource and wood-product markets modelling in quantitative scenario analysis, we account for international trade in wood products...
The EU Bioeconomy Strategy, updated in 2018, in its Action Plan pledges an EU-wide, internationally coherent monitoring system to track economic, environmental and social progress towards a sustainable bioeconomy. This paper presents the approach taken by the European Commission’s (EC) Joint Research Centre (JRC) to develop such a system. To accomp...
Monitoring employment in the European wood-based bioeconomy requires reliable, consistent, and comparable statistics across subsectors and over time. Statistics concerning employment in wood-based industries—the main component of the forest-based bioeconomy—must be processed carefully to cope with differences in definitions and estimation methods....
This report assesses and accounts for four ecosystem services (ES): crop provision, timber provision, global climate regulation, and flood control. The methodology applied for the accounts of each ecosystem service depends on the nature of the service and on data availability.
So far, six ecosystem service accounts at the EU level have been develop...
The importance of forest ecosystems to human well-being cannot be overstated. But forest management strategies do not necessarily seek to enhance the value of all forest goods and services, whether locally, nationally or internationally. In most cases, management considers a limited portfolio of ecosystem services, mainly limited to those goods and...
Biomass is a renewable resource but it is also limited since finite resources, such as land, water, and nutrients are required for its production. Due to the growing interest on bioeconomy by which the biological resources are sustainably produced and converted into value added products (e.g., food, feed, bio-based products, and bioenergy), a knowl...
A recent paper by Kallio et al. (2018) attempts to assess economic impacts that could result from the implementation
of the “Forest Reference Level” (FRL) approach included in the recently approved EU LULUCF
Regulation. FRLs are country-projected baselines of net emissions of greenhouse gases (GHG) from forests,
against which the future net emissio...
The report delivers an assessment of EU biomass production, uses, flows and related environmental impacts for the sectors agriculture, forestry, fisheries and aquaculture, and algae. Quantitative estimates are derived from available data and current knowledge, yet highlighting the uncertainties and the remaining gaps.
The work is framed within the...
This report illustrates part of the results from the first two years of JRC biomass study, carried out in the context of the mandate on the provision to EC services of data and analysis on biomass flow, supply and demand on a long-term basis.
Climate change is expected to reduce water availability in the Mediterranean region and water management needs to adapt to future conditions. The aims of this study were (1) to develop a participatory approach for identifying and evaluating management options for river basin climate adaptation and (2) to apply and evaluate the approach in four case...
The EU Water Framework Directive aims to ensure restoration of Europe’s water bodies to “good ecological status” by 2027. Many Member States will struggle to meet this target, with around half of EU river catchments currently reporting below standard water quality. Diffuse pollution from agriculture represents a major pressure, affecting over 90% o...
The report is organised in four sections addressing respectively forestry, agriculture, fisheries & aquaculture, and algae. The reported data is centred on 2013. Total weight is generally expressed as a million tonnes (109 kg or Mt) of dry weight for the forestry and agricultural sector. In addition, for the fisheries and aquaculture, and algae sec...
Key messageWhen predicting forest growth at a regional or national level, uncertainty arises from the sampling and the prediction model. Using a transition-matrix model, we made predictions for the whole Catalonian forest over an 11-year interval. It turned out that the sampling was the major source of uncertainty and accounted for at least 60 % of...
Beyond their high potential for climate change mitigation, forests provide many other benefits, notably on livelihood, biodiversity, soil and water quality. In this paper, we assess the level of consideration for such co-benefits in REDD+ projects and carbon markets. We first show that the topic is particularly relevant when climate change mitigati...
This special issue of Forest Policy and Economics is based on the papers presented and discussions held at the International Conference on the New Frontiers of Forest Economics, June 26-30, 2012 held at ETH, Zurich, Switzerland. This paper discusses the need of new frontiers of forest economics, provides an overview of the special issue, and presen...
Ecosystems provide numerous goods and services to human beings. However, the intensive use of natural resources has impacted the functioning of ecosystems and reduced their production capacities. In this context, societies and individuals are giving increasing importance to environmental services (ES). To capture the values of ESs and to ensure the...
Estimates of growing stock in European countries vary mainly by using different thresholds for dbh
of sample trees, as well as by the inclusion or exclusion of stump and stem top volume. European national forest inventories use dbh thresholds ranging from 0 to 12 cm in estimating the volume of growing stock. COST ActionE43 has agreed to a reference...
La demande en produits et services forestiers est en croissance et se diversifie : production de bois, matériau et source d'énergie renouvelables, lutte contre le changement climatique, mais aussi préservation de la biodiversité, maintien de la qualité paysagère, récréation... Ces multiples services écosystémiques sont produits conjointement en for...
Produce wood, preserve the environment, provide social services: all these goods and services are expected of the forests nowadays. Forests can sustainably produce them, but how much? These products are joined outputs in a production process composed of forest growth and management. Therefore, it is important to characterize how outputs are joined...
Lawrence, M. 2009. Common tree definitions for national forest inventories in Europe. Silva Fennica 43(2): 303–321. At the international level, various definitions have been established for the compilation and publication of forest resources assessment results over the last decade. These international definitions frequently rely on terms that are n...
• Epicormics are important defects of oak timber which originate from suppressed buds placed early and develop into epicormic shoots depending on the light available, which in turn depends on stand density. In this context, our objective was to assess the epicormic shoots present in a 20-year-old experimental plantation of sessile oak and to test a...
International agreements such as the Kyoto protocol and Convention on Biological Diversity (1992), as well as, criteria and indicator processes require reports on the status of nations' forests. Any comparison of the current status and trends of forest resources among nations presumes that the nations' applied definitions and concepts produce compa...
To automatically analyze near infrared aerial photographs, the French National Institute for Research in Computer Science and Control developed together with the French National Forest Inventory (NFI) a method for automatic crown cover mapping. This method uses a Reverse Jump Monte Carlo Markov Chain algorithm to locate the crowns and describe thos...
The French National Forest Inventory was created in 1958 to assess metropolitan forest resources. To stick to new national and international requirements as well as to enhance reactivity, a new inventory method was implemented in 2004. This new method is based on a systematic sampling grid covering the whole territory every year. The size of the me...