Public Forests Should be Carbon Reserves

One of the biggest impacts resulting from logging our forests that is largely ignored by public land management agencies is the contribution that timber harvest makes to Green House Gas (GHG) emissions. Increasingly it is clear that the greatest value of our public forests might be to end all thinning/logging and protect them as carbon reserves.

Logging/thinning woodlands whether justified to reduce wildfires, “restore” forests, or merely to produce wood fiber for the timber industry causes a net loss of carbon to the forest ecosystem.

What is surprising to many who continuously hear about the damage to tropical forests from logging is that more forest cutting and removal results from deforestation of both private and public lands in the United States than any other country in the world! Therefore, a reduction in US logging practices has significant potential to reduce US global GHG emissions.

In 2018, the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences published an analysis of Oregon’s logging industry. The study concluded that the largest source of CO2 emissions in Oregon contributing to Green House Gas (GHG) emissions came from logging/thinning projects. That is more GHG emissions that result from all the cars, airplanes, and industrial sources in the state.

Another Oregon study found GHG emissions resulting from timber harvest on state and private lands alone were “four to seven times higher those associated with coal combustion by the Boardman coal-fired plant in 2012, are equivalent to 2-4 million new cars on the road and make logging on State and private lands one of Oregon’s biggest GHG polluters and a major impediment to Oregon’s ambitious GHG reduction targets.”

Research has shown that 45-60% of the carbon stored in trees is released immediately during the harvest and processing into wood products. If those trees are burned in biomass burners, the release of stored carbon is 100%.

Clearly, logging/thinning is having a significant impact on our climate.

An article in Forest Ecology and Management referring to how much carbon could be stored in forests found “… a ‘no timber harvest’ scenario eliminating harvests on public lands would result in an annual increase of 17-29 million metric tonnes of carbon (MMTC) per year between 2010 and 2050,”

Similarly, a research paper in Global Change Biology-Bioenergy concluded that “When the most realistic assumptions are used and a carbon-cycle model is applied, an increased harvest level in forests leads to a permanent increase in atmospheric CO2 concentration.”

A 2017 study determined that “…CO2 emissions from land-use change have been substantially underestimated because processes such as tree harvesting and land clearing from shifting cultivation have not been considered.”  And the paper goes on to suggest that “reforestation projects and efforts to avoid further deforestation could represent important mitigation pathways, with co-benefits for biodiversity.”

One of the justifications for logging/thinning used throughout the West is that logging/thinning will reduce or preclude large wildfires. Though wildfires do release carbon, the amount released is not nearly as large as the amount that results from logging/thinning.

Another study in Frontiers in Ecological Environments concluded the amount of biomass combusted in high-severity crown fire is greater than low-severity surface fire, but the difference is small. This makes sense since what is largely combusted in any fire, even high severity burns, are the fine fuels like grasses, shrubs, cones, and small branches, not larger tree boles (which remain as snags) or roots where the bulk of carbon is stored.

In addition, there is a low likelihood of treated forests will be exposed to fire while any fuel reduction might be effective (~20 yrs).

Meanwhile, any thinning of a larger area to decrease the probability of high-severity fire ensures decreased carbon stock and net carbon balance over the treated area, while the likelihood that any thinning/logging will preclude a high severity fire is small.

There are also social costs. The actual cost of thinning the forest is far higher than the costs of fire suppression and control. Since nearly all timber sales on public lands lose money, the economic value of wide-spread thinning makes no economic sense.

When you add in the potential loss of carbon storage, then thinning and logging is very costly to society. For instance, a 2015 study by the Federal Forest Carbon Coalition that reviewed proposed BLM logging in western Oregon “indicates the additional climate-related costs may:  Outweigh the additional timber-related benefits by more than 30-to-1. Equal $1.6 million per additional timber-related job. Equal $68 for every $1 of additional timber-related payments to local counties.”

And this economic analysis did not try to qualify the other economic costs to society resulting from thinning/logging, including damage to watersheds, loss of biomass (snags and dead wood critical to forest ecosystems), habitat fragmentation from logging roads, spread of weeds and many other “costs” that result from Industrial forestry practices.

In short, a reduction in all timber harvest is desirable. However, the one area where the public has immediate control lies on our public forestlands.  Logging our public forests make no economic or ecological sense an age of rising temperatures and climate change. Setting aside all public forests as carbon reserves is easily the highest and best use of these public lands.

Some references:

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