Innovative wood use can enable carbon-beneficial forest management in California

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Significance

Natural carbon sinks can help mitigate climate change, but climate risks—like increased wildfire—threaten forests’ capacity to store carbon. California has recently set ambitious forest management goals to reduce these risks. However, management can incur carbon losses because wood residues are often burnt or left to decay. This study applies a systems approach to assess climate change mitigation potential and wildfire outcomes across forest management scenarios and several wood products. We find that innovative use of wood residues supports extensive wildfire hazard reduction and maximizes carbon benefits. Long-lived products that displace carbon-intensive alternatives have the greatest benefits, including wood building products. Our results suggest a low-cost pathway to reduce carbon emissions and support climate adaptation in temperate forests.

Abstract

Responsible stewardship of temperate forests can address key challenges posed by climate change through sequestering carbon, producing low-carbon products, and mitigating climate risks. Forest thinning and fuel reduction can mitigate climate-related risks like catastrophic wildfire. These treatments are often cost prohibitive, though, in part because of low demand for low-value wood “residues.” Where treatment occurs, this low-value wood is often burned or left to decay, releasing carbon. In this study, we demonstrate that innovative use of low-value wood, with improved potential revenues and carbon benefits, can support economical, carbon-beneficial forest management outcomes in California. With increased demand for wood residues, forest health–oriented thinning could produce up to 7.3 million (M) oven-dry tonnes of forest residues per year, an eightfold increase over current levels. Increased management and wood use could yield net climate benefits between 6.4 and 16.9 million tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent (M tCO ₂ e) per year when considering impacts from management, wildfire, carbon storage in products, and displacement of fossil carbon-intensive alternatives over a 40-y period. We find that products with durable carbon storage confer the greatest benefits, as well as products that reduce emissions in hard-to-decarbonize sectors like industrial heat. Concurrently, treatment could reduce wildfire hazard on 4.9 M ha (12.1 M ac), a quarter of which could experience stand-replacing effects without treatment. Our results suggest that innovative wood use can support widespread fire hazard mitigation and reduce net CO ₂ emissions in California.

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Most cited references 53

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Natural climate solutions

Bronson W. Griscom, Justin Adams, Peter Ellis … (2017)

Significance Most nations recently agreed to hold global average temperature rise to well below 2 °C. We examine how much climate mitigation nature can contribute to this goal with a comprehensive analysis of “natural climate solutions” (NCS): 20 conservation, restoration, and/or improved land management actions that increase carbon storage and/or avoid greenhouse gas emissions across global forests, wetlands, grasslands, and agricultural lands. We show that NCS can provide over one-third of the cost-effective climate mitigation needed between now and 2030 to stabilize warming to below 2 °C. Alongside aggressive fossil fuel emissions reductions, NCS offer a powerful set of options for nations to deliver on the Paris Climate Agreement while improving soil productivity, cleaning our air and water, and maintaining biodiversity.

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Impact of anthropogenic climate change on wildfire across western US forests

John Abatzoglou, A. Park Williams (2016)

Increased forest fire activity across the western United States in recent decades has contributed to widespread forest mortality, carbon emissions, periods of degraded air quality, and substantial fire suppression expenditures. Although numerous factors aided the recent rise in fire activity, observed warming and drying have significantly increased fire-season fuel aridity, fostering a more favorable fire environment across forested systems. We demonstrate that human-caused climate change caused over half of the documented increases in fuel aridity since the 1970s and doubled the cumulative forest fire area since 1984. This analysis suggests that anthropogenic climate change will continue to chronically enhance the potential for western US forest fire activity while fuels are not limiting. Increased forest fire activity across the western continental United States (US) in recent decades has likely been enabled by a number of factors, including the legacy of fire suppression and human settlement, natural climate variability, and human-caused climate change. We use modeled climate projections to estimate the contribution of anthropogenic climate change to observed increases in eight fuel aridity metrics and forest fire area across the western United States. Anthropogenic increases in temperature and vapor pressure deficit significantly enhanced fuel aridity across western US forests over the past several decades and, during 2000–2015, contributed to 75% more forested area experiencing high (>1 σ) fire-season fuel aridity and an average of nine additional days per year of high fire potential. Anthropogenic climate change accounted for ∼55% of observed increases in fuel aridity from 1979 to 2015 across western US forests, highlighting both anthropogenic climate change and natural climate variability as important contributors to increased wildfire potential in recent decades. We estimate that human-caused climate change contributed to an additional 4.2 million ha of forest fire area during 1984–2015, nearly doubling the forest fire area expected in its absence. Natural climate variability will continue to alternate between modulating and compounding anthropogenic increases in fuel aridity, but anthropogenic climate change has emerged as a driver of increased forest fire activity and should continue to do so while fuels are not limiting.

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The global tree restoration potential

Jean-Francois Bastin, Yelena Finegold, Claude García … (2019)

The restoration of trees remains among the most effective strategies for climate change mitigation. We mapped the global potential tree coverage to show that 4.4 billion hectares of canopy cover could exist under the current climate. Excluding existing trees and agricultural and urban areas, we found that there is room for an extra 0.9 billion hectares of canopy cover, which could store 205 gigatonnes of carbon in areas that would naturally support woodlands and forests. This highlights global tree restoration as our most effective climate change solution to date. However, climate change will alter this potential tree coverage. We estimate that if we cannot deviate from the current trajectory, the global potential canopy cover may shrink by ~223 million hectares by 2050, with the vast majority of losses occurring in the tropics. Our results highlight the opportunity of climate change mitigation through global tree restoration but also the urgent need for action.

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Author and article information

Journal

Journal ID (nlm-ta): Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A

Journal ID (iso-abbrev): Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A

Journal ID (hwp): pnas

Journal ID (publisher-id): PNAS

Title: Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America

Publisher: National Academy of Sciences

ISSN (Print): 0027-8424

ISSN (Electronic): 1091-6490

Publication date (Electronic): 22 November 2021

Publication date (Print): 7 December 2021

Publication date PMC-release: 22 November 2021

Volume: 118

Issue: 49

Electronic Location Identifier: e2019073118

Affiliations

[1] ^aEnergy and Resources Group, University of California , Berkeley, CA 94720;

[2] ^bPacific Northwest Research Station, US Department of Agriculture Forest Service , Portland, OR 97205;

[3] ^cCenter for Fire Research and Outreach, University of California , Berkeley, CA 94720;

[4] ^dPacific Southwest Research Station, US Department of Agriculture Forest Service , Davis, CA 95618;

[5] ^eDepartment of Environmental Science, Policy, and Management, University of California , Berkeley, CA 94720

Author notes

¹To whom correspondence may be addressed. Email: sanchezd@ 123456berkeley.edu .

Edited by Alan Organschi, Yale University, New Haven, CT and accepted by the Editorial Board October 15, 2021 (received for review September 10, 2020)