Potential impacts of climate change on wood deterioration

authored by

C. Brischke, A. O. Rapp

Abstract

Climate changes were discussed in many disciplines during recent years. The discussion mainly focused on three aspects: the significance of climate changes, anthropogenic sources for climate changes and finally potential consequences on ecological and economical patterns. This study concentrates on potential impacts of global warming and corresponding moistening on the durability of wooden building components. From experimental test set-ups in the field, climatic data, wood temperature and wood moisture content were used for mathematic modelling of decay. On that basis, a first attempt is made to quantify the influence of climate changes on wood decay rates for various scenarios. It became obvious that warming and humidification will lead to significantly reduced service lives of wooden building components. The quantity of climate induced changes strongly depends on the geographical position and the present climate. Differences between climatically divergent places are shown exemplarily for the sites Uppsala, Freiburg, Portsmouth, Bordeaux and Zagreb.

Organisation(s)

Institute of Vocational Sciences in the Building Trade

Type

Article

Journal

International Wood Products Journal

Volume

1

Pages

85-92

No. of pages

8

ISSN

2042-6445

Publication date

11.2010

Publication status

Published

Peer reviewed

Yes

ASJC Scopus subject areas

Forestry, General Materials Science

Sustainable Development Goals

SDG 13 - Climate Action

Electronic version(s)

https://doi.org/10.1179/2042645310Y.0000000006 (Access: Closed)