Sustainable Management of Tropical Forests Can Reduce Carbon Emissions and Stabilize Timber Production

Abstract

HIGHLIGHTS• About 500 million hectares of tropical forests have been degraded due primarily to overexploitation • Preventing premature re-entry into harvested areas can retain up to 34% of carbon stocks in the forests • Adoption of reduced-impact logging and wood processing technologies (RIL+) along with financial incentives can reduce forest fires, forest degradation, maintain timber production, and retain carbon stocks • About US$1.8 Mg CO −1 2 or US$2 billion year −1 is needed for the adoption of RIL+ for the whole tropical production forests.The REDD+ scheme of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change has provided opportunities to manage tropical forests for timber production and carbon emission reductions. To determine the appropriate logging techniques, we analyzed potential timber production and carbon emission reductions under two logging techniques over a 40-year period of selective logging. We found that use of reduced-impact logging (RIL) techniques alone in tropical production forests (PdF) could reduce carbon emissions equivalent to 29-50% of net emissions from tropical deforestation and land use change, while also supplying 45% of global round-wood demand. Adopting RIL plus other improvements (RIL+) in forest management (adopting forest certification and DNA timber tracking to prevent illegal logging) and wood conversion practices (adopting technology to increase recovery of sawn wood), would result in increasing long-term carbon storage in sawn-wood and reduce logging-induced fire-prone wood wastes by 14-184%. For this to happen, about US$2 billion or $1.86 per Mg CO 2 in financial Sasaki et al. Sustainable Management of Tropical Forests incentives are needed annually for parties to adopt RIL+ and to prevent premature re-entry logging. Our findings suggest that future climate policies should explicitly include RIL+ to satisfy the "sustainable management of forests" proviso in the REDD+ scheme, and also count carbon in wood products as eligible credits for trading.

Drought cuts back regeneration in logged tropical forests

“…Similarly, increasing plot AGB from severely logged state with 1 Mg ha −1 to median level of forest AGB of 78 Mg ha −1 is expected to reduce the drought mortality of tree seedlings from 17% to 8%. These results lend further support to improved tropical production forest management recommendations (Sasaki et al 2016), with reduced biomass impact harvesting being the key to achieving not only faster biomass recovery, but also increased drought resilience of logged forests. When non-tree woody seedlings were considered, drought mortality was less sensitive to logging intensity (table 1) compared to tree seedlings only (table 2).…”

“…Importantly, logged forests likely retain a seedling and sapling pool consisting of late succession species potentially allowing for faster regeneration, which served as the basis for traditional silvicultural management (Van Gardingen et al 1998). Indeed low impact logging combined with improved tropical production forest management may achieve rapid carbon stock recovery (Sasaki et al 2016) and encourage forest regeneration (O'Brien et al 2019). It has also been shown that a range of abiotic and biotic processes may be sustained in logged forests at levels similar to unlogged forest , indicating substantial ecosystem resilience and potentially facilitating natural regeneration.…”

Mapped aboveground carbon stocks to advance forest conservation and recovery in Malaysian Borneo

“…Based on current distributions of forest carbon stocks, we contend that Sabah could, theoretically, double its total aboveground carbon stock just by allowing the current areas of logged forest to fully regenerate. Timescales of regeneration to full carbon density are poorly understood, but studies around the humid tropics suggest a century or more time will be needed (Keller et al, 2004;Pinard and Cropper, 2000;Sasaki et al, 2016). Our results provide a critically important input into the process of identifying high conservation value forests, and to determine potential areas for new protections that conserve and recover Sabah's remaining forests.…”

Land Use, Conservation, Forestry, and Agriculture in Puerto Rico

“…We balance the interest in forestry productivity with interests in agricultural productivity and water conservation, as this use is intermediate between intensive agriculture and forest preservation. Low impact forest harvest methods provide forest cover, habitat, and watershed protection from erosion [46][47][48]. Puerto Rico, at one time, had a thriving timber industry, producing fuel, furniture, and building materials to meet all of its needs [49,50].…”