Adaptive Forest Management and Climate Change

Adaptive Forest Management Practices with Carbon Credits and Climate Change

Along the corridor from Tiger Mountain over Snoqualmie Pass to the North Fork of the Teanaway River the land is both privately and publicly owned. Private landowners with less incentive to preserve the ecosystem of primary forests should be encouraged to preserve old growth trees through economic mechanisms associated with carbon sequestration initiatives that integrate significant concepts of biological diversity in the set of goals.

Comparing uptake in Washington to the amount of emissions of carbon dioxide, forests absorb only 20 percent of what is emitted. Carbon dioxide is emitted by human activities and natural processes such as fire, decomposition, and respiration. Forest soils and vegetation store carbon at different rates depending on traits of the ecosystem.
• Young forests store approximately 20 - 60 tons per acre/per year in Western Washington, and these forests take in 2 to 3 tons of carbon per acre per year. More carbon is stored in wet cool soil, in marshes, and in alpine peaty soil than in other types.
• Old forests have 150-400+ tons per acre/per year of storage and a + or minus 0.5 uptake. One key difference with older forests is that they tend to have woody debris, which is a significant carbon storage mechanism and health indicator for nutrition to the soil and the later growth of new trees.

Forest managers who report to Washington State and the Federal Government about carbon sequestration issues along this corridor will increasingly be responsible for communicating with policy makers about active management for carbon uptake versus carbon storage. As climate change begins to affect the American public's consciousness, carbon credits for forests will be discussed as a way to convince private landowners of the need to grow trees to reduce carbon in the atmosphere. The value of carbon storage in old growth forests will need to be defended and substantiated by scientific studies that link together a whole picture that conveys the multiple ecological services of these sites so that primary forests are not logged in a pre-emptive measure by landowners to take advantage of tax credits for planting trees.

"The threat to biodiversity over the coming century is many faceted; carbon accounting poses biological risks because of the skewed incentives for economic benefit. Under a carbon trading scenario, if forest management issues are not taken into account, a landowner could accrue credits by logging primary forests now and replacing them with rapidly growing plantations until 2008 when the Kyoto regulations will take affect. Landowners win twice through the sale of timber and carbon credits meanwhile young saplings are planted in an environment where threats of disease, pests, extended seasonal drought pose a significant challenge to the maturation of these newly forested lands. All of this takes place in a world where direct destruction, fragmentation, and degradation of ecosystems by humans are proceeding at a breakneck pace worldwide."
-- Reed F. Noss author of an article titled "Beyond Kyoto: Forest Managment in a Time of Rapid Climate Change."

References
Noss, Reed F., "Beyond Kyoto: Forest Managment in a Time of Rapid Climate Change", Conservation Biology, June 2001, Vol. 15 No 3, 578-598.

Carey et al., "Are old forests underestimated as global carbon sinks?", Global Change Biology, (2001) 7, 339-344.

Cwynar, Les C., "Fire and the Forest History of the North Cascade Range", Ecology, 68(4), 1987, 791-802.

Peterson, David W. and David L. Peterson, "Mountain Hemlock Growth Responds to Climatic Variability at Annual and Decadal Time Scales", Ecology, 82 (12), 2001, 3330-3345.

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