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Forests and woodlands play a very important role in many aspects of human life, and they also affect the quality of the environment. Recently, the interest of researchers and governments has focused on the function of woodlands in terms of current climate change. In this regard forests perform four basic functions: they are ?causes?, ?victims?, ?beneficiaries?, and ?medicine? for the ongoing changes. The last function includes participation in the reduction of greenhouse gases, by absorbing carbon dioxide and prod...

The research aim is to identify a financial gain a forest owner can make from the management of a deciduous forest stand in Latvia provided that the stand is logged at the final (clear) felling age and the revenue is earned selling the wood as roundwood assortments and residue biomass or only as biomass (BM). The present research analysed the situation with forests owned by natural persons of the Republic of Latvia and identified the amounts of revenue a forest owner can earn growing deciduous ? birch, black alder...

During the biomass densification can be recognized various technological variables and also material parameters which significantly influences the final solid biofuels quality. The paper deals with the experimental research of the relationship between technological variables and material parameters during densification of acacia wood sawdust. The main goal of presented experimental research is to determine the relationship between compression pressure, pressing temperature and raw material moisture content and par...

In the Czech Republic, the production of energy using fossil fuels - particularly coal - is still a major proportion of total production. The energy sector is and will remain one of the most important areas of the Czech economy, ensuring supply of electricity and heat to the population and industrial enterprises. In the power and heating plants is burned primarily domestic brown coal mined in opencast mines in the north-western part of the Czech Republic, namely, Usti Region. For combustion of biomass in the Czech...

Energetic crops are increasingly used as renewable sources of energy as well as for their ability to fix and accumulate carbon in the soil. Willow culture for biomass promotes rural development and environmental protection, especially if it is established in areas less favorable for agricultural crops. Researches from this work has been carried out in a wide range of genotypes of Salix sp. cultivated on a deposit of ash resulting from coal burning to Isalnita Power Station, near Craiova, Romania, over a period of ...

We live in the interglacial period that is causing warming effect on the Earth?s climate reflected in water scarcity. Water is an essential substance in agricultural production. Therefor appropriate management is necessary to achieve sustainability. Material flow analysis (MFA) provides an overview of the system by linking the anthroposphere with the environment, and can highlight environmental or resource issue problems. Thus MFA can be used as a tool of material management. We applied partial MFA for quantifying...

Nowadays the renewable sources of energy are gaining more and more in importance to meet the society requirements of energy in a sustainable way. Biomass is among the renewable sources of energy which is known and used since ancient times and it is of great importance for present as well as for the future. One source of biomass are agricultural crops through their residues but also as agricultural crops specially designed to produce biomass and known as energy crops. Although the biomass was traditionally used to ...

The research aim is to estimate the profit a forest owner can earn per full forest rotation cycle from forest stands of dominant coniferous species in Latvia, selling both the assortment of logs and biomass (BM) from final felling. The research analysed the situation in privately managed forests, composed of the coniferous species ? Norway spruce (Picea abies L.) and Scots pine (Pinus syllvestris L.) ? in different forest types in Latvia. The calculation of revenue from forest product sales took into account both ...

The main objectives of each of cities from Romania are sustainable development, energy efficiency, use of renewable energy and ensuring a clean and healthy environment for citizens in a modern city, attractive, prosperous and a high standard of living. The climate changes, increasingly present every day in the realities of city, mainly caused by human factor, obliges us to a new approach and orientation responsible for the future of our decisions in order to rational and efficient use of resources, especially in o...

The totality of all that is human-made: technical devices and systems, cities, houses, roads and all that humans have constructed to keep them alive on the planet are called the technosphere. The technosphere though is a relatively new phenomenon is evolving extraordinarily rapidly and its mass has been estimated to approximate to 30 trillion tons. Currently the weight of all that man creates in a year is an order of magnitude greater than the mass of wild living organisms (biomass). Thus, our civilization faces v...