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Estimates of carbon stored in harvested wood products from United States Forest Service Alaska Region, 1910-2012

Informally Refereed

Abstract

Global forests capture and store significant amounts of carbon through photosynthesis. When carbon is removed from forests through harvest, a portion of the harvested carbon is stored in wood products, often for many decades. The United States Forest Service (USFS) and other agencies are interested in accurately accounting for carbon flux associated with harvested wood products (HWP) to meet greenhouse gas monitoring commitments and climate change adaptation and mitigation objectives. National-level forest carbon accounting has been in place for over a decade, but there is an increasing need for accounting for smaller scale administrative units, including USFS National Forest System regions and individual National Forests. This paper uses the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) production accounting approach to estimate HWP carbon storage from 1910 to 2012 for the USFS Alaska Region. For the Alaska Region as a whole, carbon stocks in the HWP pool were increasing at nearly one-half million megagrams of carbon (MgC) per year in the late 1960s and early 1970s, with peak cumulative storage of 13.5 million MgC occurring in 1996. Net positive flux into the HWP pool over this period is primarily attributable to high harvest levels in the mid-1950s through the 1990s. Harvest levels declined after 1990, resulting in less carbon entering the HWP pool. Since 2005, emissions from HWP at solid waste disposal sites have exceeded additions from harvesting, resulting in a decline in the total amount of carbon stored in the HWP pool. The Alaska Region HWP pool is now in a period of negative net annual stock change because the decay of products harvested between 1910 and 2012 exceeds additions of carbon to the HWP pool through harvest. Together with estimates of ecosystem carbon, which are also being developed through the Forest Management Carbon Framework (ForCaMF), Regional level estimates of HWP carbon flux can be used to inform management decisions and guide climate change adaptation and mitigation efforts by the agency. Though our emphasis is on the Alaska Region as a whole, this accounting method can be applied more broadly at smaller land management units, such as National Forests.

Keywords

carbon, harvested wood products, Alaska Region

Citation

Loeffler, Dan; Anderson, Nathaniel; Stockmann, Keith; Skog, Ken; Healey, Sean; Jones, J. Greg; Morrison, James; Young, Jesse. 2014. Estimates of carbon stored in harvested wood products from United States Forest Service Alaska Region, 1910-2012. Unpublished report. Missoula, MT: U.S. Department of Agriculture, Forest Service, Rocky Mountain Research Station, Forestry Sciences Laboratory. 26 p.
https://www.fs.usda.gov/research/treesearch/46643