Opportunities for forest sector emissions reductions: a state‐level analysis

Abstract

The forest sector can play a significant role in climate change mitigation. We evaluated forest sector carbon trends and potential mitigation scenarios in Vermont using a systems‐based modeling framework that accounts for net emissions from all forest sector components. These components comprise (1) the forest ecosystem, including land‐use change, (2) harvested wood products (HWP), and (3) substitution effects associated with using renewable wood‐based products and fuels in place of more emission‐intensive materials and fossil fuel‐based energy. We assessed baseline carbon trends from 1995 through 2050 using a business as usual (BAU) scenario. Emission reductions associated with different forest management and HWP scenarios were evaluated relative to the BAU scenario from 2020 to 2050. We estimated uncertainty for each forest sector component and used a Monte Carlo approach to estimate the distribution of cumulative total mitigation for each scenario relative to baseline. Our analysis indicates that the strength of the forest sector carbon sink in Vermont has been declining and will continue to decline over coming decades under the BAU scenario. However, several scenarios evaluated here could be effective in reducing emissions and enhancing carbon uptake. Shifting HWP to longer‐lived commodities resulted in a 14% reduction in net cumulative emissions by 2050, the largest reduction of all scenarios. A scenario that combined extending harvest rotations, utilizing additional harvest residues for bioenergy, and increasing forest productivity resulted in a 12% reduction in net cumulative emissions. Shifting commodities from pulp and paper to bioenergy showed a 7.3% reduction in emissions. In contrast, shortening rotations to increase harvests for bioenergy use resulted in a 5.5% increase in emissions. In summary, model simulations suggest that net emissions could be reduced by up to 14% relative to BAU, depending on the management and HWP‐use scenario. Combining multiple scenarios could further enhance reductions. However, realizing the full climate mitigation potential of these forests may be challenging due to socioeconomic barriers to implementation, as well as alternative management objectives that must be considered along with carbon sequestration.

Operational assessment tool for forest carbon dynamics for the United States: a new spatially explicit approach linking the LUCAS and CBM-CFS3 models

“…Importantly, fluxes due to disturbances (e.g., fire, harvest, land conversion) are also considered, as are changes in flux rates over time to variation in temperature (e.g., due to climate change), making the approach well suited for forecasting the consequences of future land management scenarios on forest carbon. Thanks to its general and transparent structure, all of CBM-CFS3 input parameters can be customized to reflect regional conditions; as a result it has been applied in many different countries [ 25 – 28 ], including studies within the U.S. [ 29 , 30 ]. A current limitation of the CBM-CFS3, however, is that it generates only spatially referenced (rather than spatially explicit) projections – i.e., the model currently tracks carbon by landscape strata, rather than by spatial cells, and thus no spatial interactions between strata are possible.…”

Analysing policy changes for achieving sustainable development goals: Insights from forest, environment and climate change action plan in Bangladesh

“…In this regard, Krott (2005) argues that forests provide diverse benefits spanning the entire political and social life. That means various interests and power politics are fairly noticeable concerning all‐embracing the forestry sector's ecological, economic and social benefits (Dugan et al, 2021; Wong et al, 2019; Rahman et al, 2018). More importantly, sustainable forestry practices can set the limits and directions supporting the sustainability of the environment and addressing issues linked to climate change.…”

Modeling climate-smart forest management and wood use for climate mitigation potential in Maryland and Pennsylvania

“…This study builds on previous work to understand how forest management and the forest product sector can contribute to achieving climate goals at the landscape scale within a participatory systemsbased framework (Smyth et al, 2014;Pilli et al, 2016;Olguin et al, 2018;Dugan et al, 2018aDugan et al, , 2021. The specific objectives of this study are to identify climate-smart forestry practices for Maryland and Pennsylvania by applying forest ecosystem and HWP models to analyze and quantify forest carbon tradeoffs and mitigation potential among a variety of alternative management, climate, and bioenergy scenarios against a projected "business-as-usual" (BAU) simulation.…”