Forests store a lot of carbon - about 80 percent of the world’s aboveground carbon and 40 percent of the belowground carbon. How we manage forests can affect whether they are sinks (take in more carbon than they give off, which could help slow climate change) or sources (give off more than they take in, which could contribute to climate change).
Obviously we want our forests to be sinks to help slow climate change. But to manage forest carbon properly, as well as to meet national and international commitments to report on carbon budgets, we need to know how much carbon is going in and out of Ontario’s forests.
Estimating the carbon budget for a forest area that is larger than many countries is no easy task; it requires the use of sophisticated computer models. Over the past several years, researchers at OFRI have been working on one that can be used to project how much carbon is stored overall and in various pools (live trees, other vegetation, leaf litter, etc.), both today and over the coming century.
Known as FORCARB-ON, this model is based on the U.S. national forest carbon budget model, FORCARB2. The developers -- OFRI’s Jiaxin Chen, Steve Colombo, and Michael Ter-Mikaelian as well as Linda Heath from the USDA Forest Service -- focused on Ontario’s 39.36 million hectares of managed forest*: Crown forests managed for timber or as parks and reserved lands, areas with limited fire protection, and private forests.
And what are the model’s results? It projects Ontario’s managed forests will remain a small carbon sink over the coming century. Even better, the carbon stock in wood products from trees removed from these forests will likely increase a lot. So when it comes to slowing climate change, cutting mature trees and using the timber for wood products definitely beats leaving the trees to release their carbon to burn or decay as they die.
Researchers also projected forest carbon storage and emissions for harvested wood products in four categories: in use, in landfill, burned for energy, and decomposing or burned without energy generation. In addition, the latest version of their model includes a module to simulate the effects of wildfire on forest carbon. However, projections to date do not include the effects of climate change, which could influence whether Ontario’s forests are a sink or a source over time.
For more details about FORCARB-ON and the current projections, e-mail information.ofri@ontario.ca to request Carbon Budget of Ontario’s Managed Forests and Harvested Wood Products, 2001-2100, published in Forest Ecology and Management.
* Please note that for the work reported in the paper mentioned above, the amount of managed forest in Ontario was estimated to be 42.4 million hectares; since that paper was published, the area of managed forest has been recalculated to be 39.36 million hectares.
