Holistic Carbon Management Approaches

          This summer I will be on a field crew for UVM professor William Keeton (and our very own Sarah Ford-thank you thank you) and so I decided to learn more about his research this week. I watched a video of Professor Keeton (Bill) give a presentation at a Gund Tea (Gund Institute of Environmental Economics). The lecture was titled,  "Toward a Holistic Carbon Management Approach". Bill explained that deforestation in the tropics accounts for almost 15% of global green house gas emissions. Forest regrowth compensates for some of the loss through requestering the carbon, making global forests a net carbon sink (taking in more carbon then emitting). In the lecture, Bill asks “how can we enhance the strength of forests as a carbon sink?” Can active forest management promote carbon sinks and if so, what type of management?

            The three possibilities of management for carbon sinks include: passive management, reduced harvesting intensity, and intensified forest harvests. The first option requires conserving old growth, high biomass forests, through managing them as reserves and protected areas. In the Adirondacks, it was shown that biomass accumulates at higher levels over longer timeframes. However, if we do protect more forest land as a carbon sink, we must question the effects on a global scale. Are we displacing harvest impacts to another part of the world? If there is less wood being used, what are we using as a substitute? And is it actually more sustainable? Everytime we use wood instead of something else, we avoid emissions of other substances, however there is an assumption that it is a 1:1 substitution.

            The second option is a spectrum of different management scenarios that leads right into the third option of heavy management. Intense harvesting with short rotations all the way to long rotations with minimal harvesting. With the range of options, moving towards less intense harvesting can mean more carbon sequestering. Where to fall on the management scale really depends on the other ecosystem services in that setting. Carbon needs to be balanced with bird habitat, wood products, etc…the point is to maximize the benefits through combining all the approaches. Depending on the objective, passive and active management will need to work together to achieve different ends. This will take a new generation of carbon models that can track individual stands over time and simulate different scenarios to optimize how we manage large forests for carbon and for co-benefits.

           I am really excited to check out the variety of forest plots this summer and get further experimental education on the subject!