A preliminary report: does reduced impact logging (RIL) mitigate non-CO 2 greenhouse gas emissions from natural production forests?

Abstract

Reduced impact logging (RIL) is a challenge to mitigate detrimental effects of selective logging, which is known to mitigate C losses as timbers and forest degradation. Although it was predicted that RIL can also mitigate non-CO2 greenhouse gas fluxes through reduced disturbances, the reality has been rarely reported. In the present study, we conducted a preliminary research on N2O and CH4 fluxes in a 2-ha plot in each of primary, RIL and conventional logging (CL) forest in Bornean lowland tropical rain forests. The results showed that CL significantly enhanced N2O emissions, but N2O emissions from the RIL forest did not differ from those from the primary forest, suggesting that RIL can mitigate N2O emissions enhanced by CL. On the other hand, CH4 fluxes were not significantly different among three forest types.