Land management strongly affects the ability of ecosystems to absorb and sequester carbon. Natural climate solutions (NCS), a set of specific land management interventions aimed at mitigating climate change, have been introduced as cost-effective tools in increasing carbon sequestration in terrestrial systems. Carbon storage in forests have been identified as a key NCS pathway. Forest management plays an important role in controlling the stand biomass stock, and therefore that of carbon. Improved forest management (IFM) has been identified as one of the forestry-related land management pathways with significant climate change mitigation potential. Currently, IFM is loosely defined and how it translates into practical forestry and connects to sustainable forest management (i.e., best management practices) as a whole, has not been identified in detail. Here, we assess IFM, evidence for the potential for different IFM practices to sequester carbon, and gaps in IFM and the incentives for their adoption. We offer specificity to IFM through reviewing existing best management practices and additional silvicultural practices, using the Great Lakes region as a case study.
Results/Conclusions
When carbon is considered a forest output, the value of delaying harvest is higher because carbon accumulates as the existing trees grow. One of the earlier definitions of IFM included only extended rotations. However, extending harvest rotation is not always feasible across all landscapes: longer rotations may entail the risk of climate-induced disturbances such as storm damage or insect outbreaks. In addition, we find a critical gap in evidence for IFM: soil carbon is not currently included in the guidelines or frameworks developed for forest management. Yet forest soils are a significant pool of C; an estimated 55–60% and 60–85% of total C is stored in the soil in temperate and boreal stands, respectively. Consequently, forest soils should be a critical part of any forest C accounting effort. We identify strategies to include soil carbon as a management component in IFM, and silvicultural practices that could be prioritized to maximize IFM as an NCS.