Valuing the Impact of Forest Disturbances on the Climate Regulation Service of Western U.S. Forests

The protection and expansion of forest carbon sinks are critical to achieving climate-change mitigation targets. Yet, the increasing frequency and severity of forest disturbances challenge the sustainable provision of forest services. We investigated patterns of forest disturbances’ impacts on carbo...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Published in:Sustainability 2022-01, Vol.14 (2), p.903
Main Authors: Marcos-Martinez, Raymundo, Sánchez, José J., Srivastava, Lorie, Soonsawad, Natthanij, Bachelet, Dominique
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Bark
Beetles
Biomass
Carbon sequestration
Carbon sinks
Climate change
Costs
Datasets
Discount rates
Disturbances
Ecosystems
Emissions
Estimates
Fire damage
Forest & brush fires
Forest biomass
Forest protection
Forests
Global warming
Harvest
Mitigation
Monte Carlo simulation
Net Primary Productivity
Sinkholes
Sustainability
Trees
Wood products
Citations: Items that this one cites
Items that cite this one
Online Access:Get full text
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
Description
Summary:The protection and expansion of forest carbon sinks are critical to achieving climate-change mitigation targets. Yet, the increasing frequency and severity of forest disturbances challenge the sustainable provision of forest services. We investigated patterns of forest disturbances’ impacts on carbon sinks by combining spatial datasets of forest carbon sequestration from biomass growth and emissions from fire and bark beetle damage in the western United States (U.S.) and valued the social costs of forest carbon losses. We also examined potential future trends of forest carbon sinks under two climate-change projections using a global vegetation model. We found that forest carbon losses from bark-beetle damage were larger than emissions from fires between 2003 and 2012. The cumulative social costs of forest carbon losses ranged from USD 7 billion to USD 72 billion, depending on the severity of global warming and the discount rate. Forest carbon stocks could increase around 5% under Representative Concentration Pathway (RCP) 4.5 or 7% under RCP 8.5 by 2091 relative to 2011 levels, mostly in forests with high net primary productivity. These results indicate that spatially explicit management of forest disturbances may increase forest carbon sinks, thereby improving opportunities to achieve critical climate-change mitigation goals.
ISSN:2071-1050
2071-1050
DOI:10.3390/su14020903