The forests that supply the industry’s raw material remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and store the carbon – not only in trees, but also below ground in soils and root systems, and ultimately in forest products. These forests and their carbon sequestration potential are affected by management practices, climate, and by the rise in atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO2). NCASI’s research to address forest carbon-related issues is a joint effort between the Sustainability & Climate Program, and the Forestry Program, and is oriented towards quantifying forest carbon and identifying approaches that our Member Companies can use to enhance forest carbon storage on the ground.
For more resources related to Forest Carbon, please visit the Forestry Program section of our website.
This fact sheet provides an overview of soil organic matter in forests and how various forest management practices affect soil carbon. It examines soil carbon issues specific to the forest products industry in the Great Lakes region.
The GWPbio metric provides a plot-level means for incorporating the biogenic carbon cycle into estimates of the global warming impact of biogenic CO2 emissions. This white paper examines the assertion that plot- and landscape-scale approaches are equivalent (and hence that use of GWPbio can be reconciled with a landscape approach).
Productive forests that are managed to produce products that store carbon and replace fossil fuels most often have greater long-term carbon benefits than forests left unmanaged.
The Carbon On Line Estimator (COLE) is a Java-based program developed to enable examination of forest carbon characteristics of any area of the continental US.