Private forestlands: Short-rotation clearcutting typically practiced by private industrial forest land-owners is probably the worst possible way to manage forests for carbon storage, because the young forests never develop large carbon stores; significant soil carbon is lost during and after clearcutting, slash disposal, and site preparation; and the resulting wood products produced have limited longevity. Where logging is expected to continue, scientists recommend that carbon release can be mitigated if forest managers¹:

• Allow trees to grow much longer before harvest (i.e., longer rotations⁾²,
• Retain more live trees on every acre during harvest (i.e., thin instead of clearcut),
• Retain more dead wood after harvest (e.g. protect snags, practice less intensive slash disposal and site preparation), and
• Take steps to reduce road systems and prevent soil erosion, which would help store more carbon in forest soils. 

Public lands: Federal forests can help mitigate climate change if they are restored to their natural-sustainable level of biomass and biodiversity. Large stores of carbon exist within roadless areas and mature and old-growth forests on federal lands. These should be protected from harvest, while previously logged younger forests should be carefully restored to a mature and old-growth condition that has optimal biomass storage. This management approach luckily complements other highly sought-after forest values that are currently under-represented in our forests. Careful management of forests for carbon storage can help resolve ongoing controversies over forestry’s impact on water quality, old-growth, roadless areas, fish & wildlife habitat, and scenic values. 

Market Solutions: Given humanity’s slow response to the growing evidence of human-induced climate change and its consequences, aggressive approaches such as market intervention are now needed. The debate continues on whether a carbon tax or cap-and-trade system is better, but either is better than nothing. A carbon tax system establishes the price of carbon and the market determines how much is sequestered and not emitted. In a cap-and-trade carbon market, government would determine how much total carbon can be emitted from all sources and the market would determine who is allowed to emit the carbon and at what price. 

Under current international climate protocols it is possible that forest owners of the Pacific Northwest might seek compensation for storing “extra” carbon. This would reward forest managers for storing carbon that would otherwise be transferred to the atmosphere and help off-set some of the economic costs of managing forests for carbon storage. However, there are unresolved issues about how to account for the full carbon consequences of proposed forest management activities³.  For instance, the Kyoto Protocol has some “perverse incentives” that could reward carbon-poor young forests at the expense of carbon-rich old forests, though this is not scientifically supported. 

In contrast to the sink management proposed in the Kyoto protocol, which favors young forest stands, we argue that preservation of natural old-growth forests may have a larger effect on the carbon cycle than promotion of regrowth. ... [I]ncreasing life-span of the stand, proportionally more carbon can be transferred into a permanent pool of soil carbon (passive soil organic matter or black carbon)... [R]eplacing unmanaged old-growth forest by young Kyoto stands ... will lead to massive carbon losses to the atmosphere mainly by replacing a large pool with a minute pool of regrowth and by reducing the flux into a permanent pool of soil organic matter⁴. 

Carbon stored in wood products generally do not last as long as they would if left safe inside a mature tree, but we can improve the carbon storage equation by using less wood and by increasing the lifespan of wood products. It’s not just American’s big cars and SUVs that are a problem; it’s also their increasingly large houses. We should consider policies to help reverse the national trend toward larger houses, and we should build houses that last for centuries instead of just decades.