Non-timber forest financial value

• extractive - financial or economic value
  • fuel
  • lumber
  • pulp for paper
  • mining
  • hunting?
• non-extractive economic value
  • recreation
• ecosystem services
  • water reserves
  • others

coppice farm:

description

calculations

Carbon budgets

• Systems view:
  • reducing carbon into the atmosphere by:
  • maintaining carbon storage in current forests
  • decreasing carbon released during deforestation or degradation of ecosystem (soil loss, etc)
  • increasing carbon taken up during growth of a forest (such as those previously cut)
• Accounting -
  • what information do we need to make a decision and what system do we set up to get that information?
  • we don't want to miss anything - "completeness"
    • example - leakage
    • carbon is sequestered in one place but is just being released somewhere else
  • we don't want to double count anything either
    • new carbon take up can't also be counted as what is already stored
    • don't get to count the leaves when they're on the tree and also soil accumulation that year (from falling leaves)

systems diagram

environmental accounting

Management for Carbon

• FIRE
  • forests as a sink for carbon
  • need to count how much is lost to wildfires compared to how much is lost to controlled burns
  • use simulation models with different treatments to explore the outcomes
  • without wildfire - control (no action) had largest carbon stored
  • with wildfire - control had the most emmissions from fire and the least stored in trees
  • control burns - intermdediate
  • best - push forest to low-density stand of fire resistant pines
• LOGGING METHODS
  • tropical forest
  • represent about half of the 558 Pg carbon stored in all vegetation
    • Peta gram (10^15 g) - 1 metric ton = 10^6 g
    • 558 billion metric tons
  • selective logging may loose upto 70% of storage potential (damage)
  • 20 years of study and then extrapolating
  • use of intensive timber stand improvements
    • getting rid of bad trees, selective harvest
    • forest carbon recovered in 45 years after logging
    • without TSI - 100 years to recover carbon lost

Hurteau and North 2009, North et al. 2009

Blanc et al. 2009

Managing for forest ecological integrity

• composition
• structure
• function
• as compared to its natural or historical range of variation
• large forests and parks compared to smaller historical parks
• report the results green, yellow, red - stoplight metaphor
• in the context of global climate change
  • rapid change of climate doesn't allow time for the forests to adapt to new composition
  • climate models predict NH will have the climate of either Virginia or N. Carolina under low and high CO2 emission scenarios (TNC - Winter 2009)

Several Case Studies of REDD

• carbon emissions from deforestation accounts for 17 to 18% of global carbon emissions
  • that's more than all vehicles (13%)
• planting new trees counts but not cutting down forests doesn't count - until REDD
• some countries have already preserved their forests (how can that count)
• country (or larger) level of accounting is needed to avoid leakage
• in Brazil, 90% of deforestation is illegal - how can that be controlled?
• land tenure - ownership by local people is a real problem
• Economist - although REDD has risks there are more risks with continued deforestation
  • (reverse statement of the precautionary principle - i.e. we know what we are doing is bad, try something else)

• Bolivia
• N. California
• Indonesia

Some interesting facts:

• young redwood forests in California that are growing can take up about 3 tons CO2 per year per acre
• can hold 500 tons per acre total
• a car produces about 5 tons per year
• Pacific Corp has agreed to pay about $10/ton

case studies: The Nature Conservancy

Bolivia: Washington Post

carbon payments

References:

Blanc, L., Marion Echard, Bruno Herault, Damien Bonal, Eric Marcon, Jerome Chave, and Christopher Baraloto (2009). "Dynamics of above ground carbon stocks in a selectively logged tropical forest." Ecological Applications 19(6): 1397-1404.

Hurteau, M., and Malcolm North (2009). "Fuel treatment effects on tree-based forest carbon storage and emissions under modeled wildfire scenarios." Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment 7(8): 409-414.

North, M., Matthew Hurteau, and James Innes (2009). "Fire suppression and fuels treatment effects on mixed-conifer carbon stockes and emissions." Ecological Applications 19(6): 1385 - 1396.

Tierney, G., Don Faber-Langendoen, Brian R. Mitchell, W Gregory Shriver, and Jampes P. Gibbs (2009). "Monitoring and evaluating the ecological integrity of forest ecosystems." Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment 7(6): 308-316.