Academic CentreFIVE DIFFERENT FAST GROWING TREE PLANTATION MANAGEMENT PLAN EVALUATION USING AHP METHODOLOGY
Kristaps Makovskis, Dagnija Lazdiņa, Dina Popluga
Biomass is the main renewable energy source in the European Union, accounting for 63.8% of all renewable resources. Increasing the use of biomass in energy production is considered one of the tools to achieve the goal of reducing carbon emissions in the future. According to the Rural Support Service data, in 2017 around 12.4% of all agriculture land in Latvia was listed as unused. Most of these areas are not currently used in crop production and could be used for biomass production from fast growing tree plantations. In the study 5 different fast growing plantation types were offered to 11 experts to evaluate the best plantation type for this purpose. In the evaluation AHP method was used. In the first phase, various factors were ranked. According to expert evaluations, most important factor, that should be considered in choosing fast growing tree plantation type are economic factors (0.52), followed by technological (0.18), environmental (0.15) and social (0.15) factors. For every factor 4 criteria were used, in total 16 criteria were used to evaluate plantation types. Final results showed, that according to expert evaluations the best fast tree plantation type in Latvia are the intensively managed willow plantations (0.24), followed by hybrid aspen plantations managed as a forest (0.21), hybrid aspen managed as woody plantations (0.20), hybrid aspen in agroforestry systems (0,19) and extensively managed willow plantations (0.16).