Potential of alternate forest management practices to sequester and store Carbon in two forest estates in British Columbia, Canada

Abstract

This paper uses the inventory of two different actively managed forest estates located on the Coast and Interior forest regions in British Columbia to analyze the potential of alternate forest management practices to sequester and store Carbon while achieving a range of management objectives. Strategies that increase growth rates (fertilization and the use of genetically improved growing stock) and a fixed reduction in the harvest level were analyzed to determine the magnitude of the difference in terms of stored Carbon. The performance of the harvest reduction strategies (fixed harvest level, increased rotation age, and increased area in reserves) was analyzed in more detail to determine if there is a reason for the forest manager to favor one of these strategies over the others, and whether this choice is the same for both forests considered in this paper. Strategies that reduce harvest levels stored significantly more Carbon over the 100-year planning horizon as compared to strategies that increase growth rates. For both forest estates, little difference was observed between the harvest reduction strategies (less than 4.1% over 100years). However, the fixed harvest level strategy allows the forest manager to shift the harvesting to various areas in order to respond to an uncertain future while accommodating the various management objectives of the forest estate.