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-CO 2 greenhouse gas fluxes through reduced disturbances, the reality has been rarely reported. In the present study, we conducted a preliminary research on N 2 O and CH 4 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 N 2 O emissions, but N 2 O emissions from the RIL forest did not differ from those from the primary forest, suggesting that RIL can mitigate N 2 O emissions enhanced by CL. On the other hand, CH 4 fluxes were not significantly different among three forest types.