Carbon in Minnesota’s Forests
current status and future opportunities
Matt Russell
Minnesota Forest Resources Council
25 May 2022
View these slides:
z.umn.edu/MFRC_carbon_May22
Goals
carbon.umn.edu
Scoping document
Carbon stocks have increased by 8% in Minnesota’s forests since 1990
Sources: Domke et al. 2021: https://www.nrs.fs.fed.us/pubs/62418; Walters et al. 2021: https://www.fs.usda.gov/rds/archive/Catalog/RDS-2021-0035
Forest Vegetation Simulator
Recommendations for future work
FOREST MANAGEMENT
MARKETS
DATA AND TECHNOLOGY
1. There remains great uncertainty about the long-term effects of lands enrolled in forest carbon programs and impacts to available wood for forest product markets.
Core recommendation: Markets
2. The opportunities, advantages, and barriers to entering voluntary and regulatory carbon markets for Minnesota’s diverse landowners needs to be fully assessed. Research that investigates the price of carbon and landowner willingness to enroll in carbon markets should be a focus of future work.
Core recommendation: Markets
3. Carbon markets are perceived in both a negative and positive manner from Minnesota’s diverse landowners. The socio-environmental aspects of carbon markets need to be fully explored.
Core recommendation: Markets
Image: R. Greenfield. Blockchain enabled carbon credit markets: https://medium.com/@robertgreenfieldiv/blockchain-enabled-carbon-credit-markets-1a195520f0e1
4. Integrating carbon as a forest management objective needs to be evaluated along with several other management objectives.
Core recommendation: Forest management
5. Forest management is transitioning from managing forests for resources to managing them for multiple services and values including climate adaptation and now climate mitigation. A more thorough understanding of how different adaptive management treatments influence forest carbon storage and sequestration patterns should be carried out for Minnesota’s primary forest types.
Core recommendation: Forest management
6. A complete life cycle assessment that focuses on timber harvesting, forest management for carbon, and in harvested wood products should be carried out for Minnesota’s primary forest types.
Core recommendation: Forest management
Source: National Council on Air and Stream Improvement
7. Remote sensing technology can leverage existing forest inventory information to better understand forest carbon, yet applications are currently limited at a broad scale in Minnesota.
Core recommendation: Data and technology
Source: Forest carbon at the Cloquet Forestry Center. Ethan Emick and Chad Babcock, https://storymaps.arcgis.com/stories/f0c99bdce70e48b1a1db74c8f8f29e88
8. There is an urgent need to better understand baselines of forest carbon in Minnesota, for example, the amount of carbon being stored and sequestered annually in Minnesota. Continuing to develop and deliver this information in a form that is accessible and understandable to a broad audience should be prioritized.
Core recommendation: Data and technology
9. Agreement needs to be met across the forestry community about how forest carbon is going to be monitored at a stand, state, and regional level.
Core recommendation: Data and technology
FOREST MANAGEMENT
MARKETS
DATA AND TECHNOLOGY
Forest Carbon Dashboard (draft, in development)
From Chris Edgar and USpatial Team, 24 May 2022
Progress and task list
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Questions/
feedback
Matt Russell
View these slides:
z.umn.edu/MFRC_carbon_May22