Title:

Can forest carbon be optimized following an eastern spruce budworm outbreak?

Forest disturbance, such as an eastern spruce budworm (Choristoneura fumiferana) outbreak, impacts the strength and persistence of forest carbon sinks. Salvage harvests are a typical management response to widespread tree mortality, but our prior research has shown that the decision to salvage mortality has large implications for the fate of carbon stocks (including forest carbon and harvested wood products) in the near and long terms. We used a range of economic discount rates and applied decision tree methods to develop a more refined knowledge of which forest stand conditions and management regimes should salvaging be encouraged by policy-makers to support emissions reduction and carbon sequestration objectives. We derived carbon sequestration outcomes from growth and harvest simulation models that incorporated a life cycle assessment of the fate of harvested material in comparative “salvage” vs. “no salvage” scenarios using US Forest Service Forest Inventory and Analysis plot data for the northeastern United States. We found that long-term carbon sequestration is negatively impacted by salvage logging when the volume of mortality is high. But interpretable rule-based classification methods can be used to determine specific forest stand characteristics where salvaging is likely to lead to more beneficial sequestration outcomes. Applying economic discount rates to future carbon stocks further affects rule-based classification model utility, where higher discount rate scenarios suggest more carbon storage can be achieved from using classification model decision-making compared to lower discount rate scenarios. Our findings provide important considerations for forest managers and policy-makers to optimize carbon sinks following major disturbances.

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