Managing for disturbance stabilizes forest carbon

Abstract

Forest ecosystems sequester approximately 12% of anthropogenic carbon emissions, and efforts to increase forest carbon uptake are central to climate change mitigation policy (1). Managing forests to store carbon has focused on increasing forested area, decreasing area lost to logging and clearing, and increasing forest carbon density. Warming, drought, and wildfires challenge the stability of carbon stored in forests (2, 3). By contrast, natural cycles of low-intensity fires in dry forests can, over the long term, promote forest carbon storage by protecting carbon in soil and in large, old trees. The conundrum is how to balance immediate, disturbance-driven carbon loss with long-term, stable carbon storage and account for these risks in policies for forest carbon management (Fig. 1). Fig. 1. Carbon-management policies would do well to use disturbance ecology to factor in tree mortality risk. For wildfire and other impactful disturbances, researchers now have the capability to incorporate these risks into policy mechanisms that enhance forest carbon storage. Doing so would substantially improve global forest carbon policies aimed at climate change mitigation. Image credit: Shutterstock/Christian Roberts-Olsen. What has been missing is the explicit use of disturbance ecology to factor in tree mortality risk. For wildfire and other impactful disturbances, our understanding is now sufficient to incorporate these risks into policy mechanisms that enhance forest carbon storage. Doing so would substantially improve global forest carbon policies aimed at climate-change mitigation. Governments currently use our understanding of natural hazards and societal risk to inform building codes for earthquakes (4) and wildfires (5) and for national flood insurance (6). Underlying these policies are the quantification of the probability of a natural hazard occurring and an assessment of the societal impact. Current carbon policy and management need to use stability and risk accounting based on our understanding … [↵][1]1To whom correspondence should be addressed. Email: mhurteau{at}unm.edu. [1]: #xref-corresp-1-1