Sustainable forest management (SFM) can improve a forest’s natural ability to sequester (carbon capture) and store carbon. When you include carbon-storing wood products, the story gets even better.
Growing trees convert carbon dioxide (CO2) to carbon and store it in their trunks, roots, branches, and leaves – much of it as wood and fiber that we use to make forest products. This process also releases oxygen, which is good for humans.
Forests do not sequester carbon at a linear rate over their lifetimes. They eventually slow sequestering and become net sources of carbon emissions through processes like respiration, decomposition, or wildfire-induced combustion. Sustainable forest management (SFM) yields a mosaic of forest conditions, including young forests that grow vigorously and pull carbon out of the atmosphere at higher rates than older forests. It also focuses on promoting forest health and producing wood products which continue to store carbon in the built environment through homes, buildings, kitchen tables, hardwood floors, and other long-lived wood products.
As stated by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, “In the long term, a sustainable forest management strategy aimed at maintaining or increasing forest carbon stocks, while producing an annual sustained yield of timber, fiber, or energy from the forest, will generate the largest sustained mitigation benefit.”
Private working forests make up 47% of the overall forest acreage of the U.S. However, private working forests provide outsized carbon benefits, accounting for approximately 80% of the total net carbon sequestration and 51% of the carbon stored in all forests.
Learn more about forests and climate change at www.ForestCarbonDataViz.org.