Forest Contribution to Climate Change Mitigation: Management Oriented to Carbon Capture and Storage

Abstract

Today, climate change is assumed by many researchers and scholars as a certainty and is presented as the biggest challenge humanity has ever faced. It is commonly accepted that anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions are the main cause that is accelerating the process. Therefore, it is urgent to find solutions to mitigate climate change, mainly because the intense effects have already been felt, in many cases in the form of the occurrence of extremely violent weather events. Forests are undoubtedly one of the most effective and easiest ways to provide the function of carbon sinks. However, it is essential and convenient to analyze the permanence time of this carbon in forests, because this permanence time depends directly on the forest management model used. This article aims to analyze forest management models from the perspective of carbon residence time in temperate forests, dividing the models into three types, namely carbon conservation models, carbon storage models, and carbon substitution models, according to their ability to contribute to functioning as carbon sinks, thereby contributing to the mitigation of climate change.

Howland Forest, ME, USA: Multi-Gas Flux Record (CO2, CH4, N2O) Establishes New Forest Products Linked to Social Cost of Emission in Contrast to Carbon Limited Sequestration Proxies

“…US-Ho3 confirms the sensitivity of eddy covariance NEE to timber harvest and regrowth ( Fig. 2-A,B), a trend not detected by CARB-CAR methods, but a requirement to test CARB-CAR modeled harvest and growth simulations (14). Eddy covariance data provide insights into carbon dynamics and related economics not possible with biometric surveys conducted every 6-to 12-years, typical for the Howland CARB-CAR protocol [17].…”

“…The main endeavor of commercial forest carbon offset trading is to assist landowners with conservation and restoration of forests based on the net carbon sequestration and carbon credit sales for a project [7], [8], while verifiably reducing net emissions. While forest restoration is recognized as a viable, economic and readily deployable nature based commercial solution to mitigate climate change [9]- [14], forest loss continues at a rate of ~10 million hectares annually from 2015 -2020 [15]. In contrast, the forest landscape conserved by carbon protocols and trading is astonishingly small, ~0.03% of the available land for restoration of ~0.9 billion hectares [12], [15], evidence that existing methods underpinning forest carbon are not economically or ecologically viable.…”

Understanding Weather and Climate Extremes

“…In turn, these impacts affect the severity and frequency of environmental threats, such as forest fires, hurricanes, heat waves, floods, droughts episodes, and land degradation, in some cases (Orimoloye et al 2019;Orimoloye et al 2021). Studies have shown that extreme weather events can decrease the carbon absorption potential of an ecosystem and create a dangerous cycle in which extreme weather fuels climate change by preventing carbon absorption by forests, causing more of it to stay in the atmosphere (Nunes et al, 2020). Records from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change show that since the 1970s, the global average temperature has risen by at least 0.4 degrees Celsius (0.72 degrees Fahrenheit) and that by 2100 it could rise above pre-industrial temperatures to about 4 degrees Celsius (7.2 degrees Fahrenheit) (Koraim et al, 2011;Horton et al, 2020).…”

Howland Forest, ME, USA: Multi-Gas Flux (CO2, CH4, N2O) Social Cost Product Underscores Limited Carbon Proxies

“…The main endeavor of commercial forest carbon offset trading is to assist landowners with the conservation and restoration of forests based on the net carbon sequestration and carbon credit sales for a project [7,8] while verifiably reducing net emissions. While forest restoration is recognized as a viable, economic, and readily deployable nature-based commercial solution to mitigate climate change [9][10][11][12][13][14], forest loss continues at a rate of 10 million hectares annually from 2015-2020 [15], outpacing restorative efforts. In contrast, the forest landscape conserved by carbon protocols and trading is astonishingly small, 0.03% of the available land for restoration of~0.9 billion hectares [12,15], evidence that existing methods underpinning forest carbon are not economically or ecologically viable.…”