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Carbon sequestration via wood harvest and storage:
An assessment of its harvest potential
Ning Zeng &Anthony W. King &Ben Zaitchik &
Stan D. Wullschleger &Jay Gregg &Shaoqiang Wang &
Dan Kirk-Davidoff
Received: 10 August 2011 /Accepted: 29 October 2012 / Published online: 13 November 2012
#Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht 2012
Abstract A carbon sequestration strategy has recently been proposed in which a forest is
actively managed, and a fraction of the wood is selectively harvested and stored to prevent
decomposition. The forest serves as a ‘carbon scrubber’or ‘carbon remover’that provides
continuous sequestration (negative emissions). Earlier estimates of the theoretical potential of
wood harvest and storage (WHS) based on coarse wood production rates were 10± 5 GtC y
−1
.
Starting from this physical limit, here we apply a number of practical constraints: (1) land not
available due to agriculture; (2) forest set aside as protected areas, assuming 50 % in the tropics
and 20 % in temperate and boreal forests; (3) forests difficult to access due to steep terrain; (4)
wood use for other purposes such as timber and paper. This ‘top-down’approach yields a WHS
potential 2.8 GtC y
−1
. Alternatively, a ‘bottom-up’approach, assuming more efficient wood use
without increasing harvest, finds 0.1–0.5 GtC y
−1
available for carbon sequestration. We
suggest a range of 1–3GtCy
−1
carbon sequestration potential if major effort is made to expand
managed forests and/or to increase harvest intensity. The implementation of such a scheme at
our estimated lower value of 1 GtC y
−1
would imply a doubling of the current world wood
Climatic Change (2013) 118:245–257
DOI 10.1007/s10584-012-0624-0
N. Zeng (*)
Department of Atmospheric and Oceanic Science and Earth System Science Interdisciplinary Center,
University of Maryland, College Park, MD, USA
e-mail: zeng@atmos.umd.edu
A. W. King :S. D. Wullschleger
Environmental Sciences Division, Oak Ridge National Laboratory, Oak Ridge, TN, USA
B. Zaitchik
Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences, Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, MD, USA
J. Gregg
Risø National Laboratory for Sustainable Energy, Technical University of Denmark, Roskilde, Denmark
S. Wang
Institute of Geographic Sciences and Natural Resources Research, Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS),
Beijing, China
D. Kirk-Davidoff
Climate and Weather Services, MDA Information Systems Inc., Gaithersburg, MD, USA
harvest rate. This can be achieved by harvesting wood at a moderate harvesting
intensity of 1.2 tC ha
−1
y
−1
, over a forest area of 8 Mkm
2
(800 Mha). To achieve the higher
value of 3 GtC y
−1
, forests need to be managed this way on half of the world’s forested land, or
on a smaller area but with higher harvest intensity. We recommend WHS be considered part of
the portfolio of climate mitigation and adaptation options that needs further research.
1 Climate mitigation and adaptation: An important role for biospheric carbon
sequestration?
Atmospheric CO
2
concentration has increased from a pre-industrial value of 280 ppm to nearly
390 ppm today, mostly due to carbon emissions from fossil-fuel burning and deforestation. The
stated goal of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) is to
stabilize greenhouse gas concentrations at a level that would prevent ‘dangerous anthropogenic
interference with the climate system’. With the approval of the Copenhagen Accord, signatory
nations recognized a goal of limiting global warming to below 2 °C. Achieving this goal will
require ambitious action on a very large scale. The International Energy Agency (IEA 2009), for
example, found that a 450 ppm stabilization scenario thought to be consistent with the 2 °C goal
would require an investment of 10 trillion US dollars over the next 20 years with an effective
carbon price of US $50–$110/tCO
2
(metric tonnes of carbon dioxide), and up to $1,000/tCO
2
toward the end of the century.
The primary pathway to reduced greenhouse gas emissions is a transition to “low carbon
economies,”in which energy efficiency is improved and energy production has a much lower
carbon footprint by transforming the energy infrastructure to include more renewable technol-
ogies and carbon capture and sequestration. Such a transition, however, is quite difficult to
accomplish at the rate required to limit global temperature rise of 2 °C—the switch to low-
carbon infrastructure is a slow process due to a variety of technological, socioeconomic, and
political barriers. Thus carbon sequestration, namely capturing carbon that is already in the
atmosphere and locking it away, could play an important role in the cost-effective stabilization
of atmospheric CO
2
at acceptable levels. Negative emissions may also be needed in light of the
long lifetime of atmospheric CO
2
even after emissions are completely stopped. Indeed, nearly
all future emissions scenarios that involve policy-intervention assume significant contribution
from carbon sequestration (IEA 2009; Pacala and Socolow 2004; Stern 2007), in particular,
carbon capture and storage in geological formations (CCS) (IPCC 2005).
The removal of CO
2
from the atmosphere can utilize physical, chemical or biological methods
(Royal Society 2009). Biological carbon sequestration, hereafter biosequestration, relies on plant
photosynthesis to capture CO
2
and assimilate the carbon into biomass. Examples of bioseques-
tration include reforestation, no-till agriculture, and intensive forest management (IPCC 2000). In
one of the earliest studies on climate mitigation, Freeman Dyson (Dyson 1977;Dysonand
Marland 1979) estimated that planting fast-growing trees on an area approximately the size of the
United States would be enough to offset 5 GtC y
−1
(Giga tonne carbon per year) of fossil fuel
emissions (FFE). Afforestation or reforestation is arguably the most widely embraced carbon
sequestration technique because of its low cost, benign nature and many co-benefits.
Unfortunately, its capacity is limited by the availability of land and the sink slows down as the
forest matures. Because fossil fuel emissions from energy production continue to increase beyond
the sequestration capacity of terrestrial ecosystems, mitigation through land-use management is
usually viewed as a low-cost approach with relatively modest total mitigation potential.
The greatest potential for biosequestration may not come from one-time carbon storage in live
biomass, but from using plants as a ‘carbon scrubber’. For example, despite the attractiveness of
246 Climatic Change (2013) 118:245–257
reforestation, the carbon sink diminishes as a forest matures. An alternative is to manage a forest
in a way to separate ‘carbon removal’via photosynthesis from ‘carbon storage’. We can siphon
off a fraction of the large biospheric productivity and store it away semi-permanently, thus
creating a continuous stream of carbon sink (Fig. 1). If our active management stores, say 3 GtC
y
−1
, or 5 % of the terrestrial NPP, we can absorb more than 1/3 of current fossil fuel CO
2
emissions. Such reasoning lies behind recent estimates of large (theoretical) biosequestration or
bioenergy potential through forestry and agriculture (Jansson et al. 2010; Lehmann et al. 2006;
Lenton 2010;Read2008;StrandandBenford2009;Zeng2008).
2 Wood harvest and storage (WHS) for carbon sequestration
A biological carbon sequestration strategy, hereafter termed Wood Harvest and Storage
(WHS) has recently been proposed in which forest is actively managed, and a fraction of
the wood is selectively harvested via collection of dead wood or selective cutting of less
productive trees, and the logs are buried or stored above-ground to prevent decomposition
(Zeng 2008). Related biosequestration ideas include no-till agriculture (Lal 2003), mixing
biochar in soil (Woolf et al. 2010), sinking agricultural waste into the ocean (Metzger and
Benford 2001; Strand and Benford 2009) and burying logs in abandoned mines (Scholz and
Hasse 2008). Compared to many traditional carbon management ideas in which the stored
carbon saturates after a period of time, WHS creates a continuous stream of sequestered
carbon. Carbon in stored wood would be relatively easy to monitor and verify, reducing risk
of loss and other issues facing some other carbon sequestration strategies.
However, a number of issues need to be addressed. The strategy must be evaluated
quantitatively before its place in the portfolio of carbon sequestration strategies can be
assessed. Among the most urgent questions is the potential of WHS given a number of
known constraints, especially in light of competing land use. An earlier estimate of a
theoretical potential 10±5 GtC y
−1
was based on ‘potential’coarse wood production rate,
assuming natural vegetation in the absence of human activities (Zeng 2008). While this was
a useful exercise both to define the strategy and estimate a maximum potential, the presence
Fig. 1 Schematic diagram of
carbon sequestration via wood
harvest and storage (WHS). In
this example, siphoning off 3
GtC y
−1
, or 5 % of the terrestrial
NPP in the form of wood logs in
semi-permanent storage below
or above ground can counter a
significant fraction of the fossil
fuel CO
2
emissions. This work
estimates a carbon sequestration
potential between 1–3 GtC y
−1
.
Numbers indicate carbon fluxes
in GtC y
−1
Climatic Change (2013) 118:245–257 247
of human activities and the modification of natural vegetation, especially clearing of forest
for agriculture, can not be ignored, and these and other constraints will limit the potential of
WHS to only a fraction of its theoretical potential. Here we address a number of such
constraints globally and regionally in Section 3. A second set of questions associated with
implementation and possible constraints on the realization of even this limited harvest
potential is beyond the scope and is therefore not addressed here. Discussion and
Conclusions are in Section 4.
3 Estimating the harvest potential of WHS
Many technical, environmental and socioeconomic factors will limit how much carbon can be
sequestered via WHS. For example, it will compete for land for other uses, most notably
agriculture, forestry, and biofuels. There may also be competition for other uses of the harvested
biomass, either as traditional wood products of paper and building material or as biofuel. There
may be constraints generated by where and how to store large quantities of woody biomass for
decades and centuries. The environmental and social impacts of large-scale land management
need to be carefully evaluated, and the economics of WHS or any other carbon sequestration
strategy is inextricably linked to the price for carbon—how much is a ton of sequestered carbon
worth. The higher the price of carbon, the less limiting are the costs of WHS. Some of these
constraints, especially those associated with implementation, cannot be easily assessed at
present, and are beyond the scope of the current exercise. Here we primarily limit ourselves
to consideration of constraints on how much wood is available for WHS. We proceed with the
rationale that if the potential is sufficiently high to comparefavorably with alternative strategies,
the additional effort to quantitatively evaluate the additional constraints is justified. Conversely,
if that potential is comparatively small, additional constraints simply exacerbate the limited
potential and further analysis is not needed.
Here we consider four major constraints on how much wood is available for WHS:
(1) Land not available for forestry due to the use for cropland and grazing pasture land;
(2) Forest land set aside as protected areas for biological diversity;
(3) Lack of accessibility due to technical difficulty and higher cost associated with steep terrain;
(4) Wood use for other consumer purposes such as timber and paper.
We evaluate these constraints from two perspectives. In the first, a ‘top-down’approach,
we estimate a maximum theoretical potential and then consider constraints on that potential
to arrive at a potential necessarily less than (or equal to) the theoretical potential. In the
second, a ‘bottom-up’approach, we assume current global wood production reflects to a first
approximation many of the constraints on how much wood could be produced. We then
consider how much current wood production might reasonably be expanded as expanded
harvest intensity or harvesting area under the additional incentive of climate mitigation to
arrive at an estimate of the potential of WHS.
3.1 A ‘top-down’estimate
The theoretical potential is estimated as coarse wood production rate under the condition of
no human presence but with present climate and CO
2
, i.e., ‘potential vegetation’. We used
the current version of the global dynamic vegetation and terrestrial carbon model VEGAS
(Zeng 2003; Zeng et al. 2005). The carbon model was run to equilibrium forced by climate,
and the results from the last 10 years of the simulation were analyzed. The results yield a
248 Climatic Change (2013) 118:245–257
global coarse wood production rate about 10 GtC y
−1
, similar to an early version of the
model (Zeng 2008). This global rate consists of 5.6 GtC y
−1
from the tropics, 3.3 GtC y
−1
from the temperate forests, and 1.1 GtC y
−1
from the boreal forests (Table 1and Fig. 2).
Thus, tropical regions have significantly larger potential compared to temperate and boreal
regions (Table 2and Fig. 3). The fact that boreal region has relatively small potential may be
counter intuitive in light of large expanses of boreal forests, but the productivity is smaller
because of the temperature limited growth rate. In contrast, tropical forests have vigorous
growth all year round wherever water is abundant.
For the constraint from land use, we use the current land use pattern, while recognizing that
future land use may change significantly in response to the need to feed increasing population,
climate change policy and conservation (Wise et al. 2009). A land use map (Goldewijk 2001)
was used to mask out the potential vegetation in VEGAS. Cropland is found to reduce the
global theoretical potential by1.8 GtC y
−1
, while grazing pasture land reduces it by another
2.1 GtC y
−1
. After subtracting these, only 6.1 GtC y
−1
coarse wood is available, a reduction of
40 % from the theoretical potential (Table 1and Fig. 2). The cropland constraint is largest in the
temperate region, 0.9 compared to 0.5 GtC y
−1
in the tropics, whereas the grazing pasture land
constraint is larger in the tropics (1.1) than temperate forests (0.9).
Forest protection is influenced by many factors. World wide protected areas for biodi-
versity account for 11 % of the total forest land (FAO 2005), but the major intact forests are
tropical rainforests such as in the Amazon and the Congo Basin that are only weakly
protected. International efforts are underway to reduce deforestation in such regions, though
major issues remain, including the longevity of the protected carbon in the live biomass.
Here we assume a simple scenario in which 50 % of the forested land in the tropics, and
20 % in temperate and boreal regions is held in protection areas for biological diversity and
ecosystem services. This is applied to the remaining forest land after subtracting current land
use for cropping and grazing, not the theoretical potential. The result is an additional
reduction of 2.4 GtC y
−1
, so that the global potential is now 3.7 GtC y
−1
.
Table 1 Carbon sequestration potential via WHS (GtC y
−1
), estimated with a ‘top-down’approach as a
theoretical potential minus successive constraints. Numbers in parentheses indicate the reduced potential due
to the specific constraint. Boldface indicates the estimated final potential as limited by these constraints, and
this potential as percentage of fossil fuel emissions in 2005 (FFE) (Boden et al. 2011). Also listed is the
estimated area needed for WHS to achieve the corresponding carbon sequestration potential at moderate wood
harvest intensity of 1.2 tC ha
−1
y
−1
Global Tropics Temperate Boreal
Theoretical potential (GtC y
−1
) 10 5.6 3.3 1.1
-Cropland 8.2 (−1.8) 5.1 (−0.5) 2.4 (−0.9) 0.7 (−0.4)
-Grazing pasture land 6.1 (−2.1) 4.0 (−1.1) 1.5 (−0.9) 0.6 (−0.1)
-Protected (50 % Trop, 20 % temperate/boreal) 3.7 (−2.4) 2 (−2) 1.2 (−0.3) 0.5 (−0.1)
-Other wood use (FAO 2005)2.8(−0.9) 1.8(−0.2) 0.7(−0.5) 0.3(−0.2)
0>Constrained potential (GtC y
−1
)
Regional potential as percentage of
global total WHS potential
100 % 64 % 25 % 11 %
Area needed for WHS to achieve the
above potential (million km
2
)
24.6 10.9 8.0 5.7
Fossil fuel emissions (FFE) 2005 (GtC y
−1
)8 1 6 1
WHS potential as percentage of FFE 35 % 182 % 11 % 30 %
Climatic Change (2013) 118:245–257 249
Because steep terrain is generally difficult for access and forestry operations, the cost of WHS
in steep areas will likely be too high. We used the 1 km digital elevation map GTOPO30/
HYDRO1k from the US Geological Survey (http://gcmd.nasa.gov/records/GCMD_
HYDRO1k.html) to calculate the topographic gradient and computed the average in each model
grid point of VEGAS. We explored two scenarios, one in which area is considered not suitable for
harvesting if average topographic gradient is larger than 6°, and another in which the gradient is
larger than 3°. It turns out that the area with gradient larger than 6° falls completely within the
biodiversity protected area defined using the scenario above, while the 3° gradient scenario
includes about the same forest from the protection scenario for the temperate zone, while it is less
for the tropical forests. Additionally, we assume protected areas overlap with steep terrain where it
exists. As a result, we consider the terrain limit completely included in the protection scenario,
and no further reduction for the harvesting potential is applied. This is an optimistic estimate
because not all steep regions are preserved, but it is good approximation in light of the much
larger uncertainty in other factors such as coarse wood production rate.
Finally, current world wood harvest for timber, paper and other products contains 0.9 GtC y
−1
,
including both industrial roundwood and fuel wood (FAO 2005), which we adopt as the wood
use rate for our analysis. In reality, future wood use may increase, and the mix of uses may
change. For instance, post-consumer wood products have already been partly utilized for energy
through incineration (in replacement of fossil fuel) or buried in landfills semi-permanently
(Micales and Skog 1997;Skog2008), and it is generally expected that such usage will be more
wide spread in the future. This current use is mostly in the temperate regions, especially in Europe
where much of the wood productivity is already utilized.
After subtracting the forest wood productivity not available due to the above constraints,
we obtain a wood harvest potential for carbon sequestration of 2.8 GtC y
−1
globally, with
contribution from tropical forests of 1.8 (64 %), temperate 0.7 (25 %) and boreal 0.3 GtC y
−1
(11 %) (Table 1). Regionally, the potential is high in the tropics: South America could
sequester 0.9 GtC y
−1
or 32 % of the world total, while Africa can contribute 0.5 (21 %),
Asia 0.42 (16 %), North America 0.32 (12 %), Oceania 0.28 (10 %), and Europe (including
Russia) 0.23 (8 %) (Table 2). At the country level, while tropical rainforest countries in
South America, Africa, Southeast Asia and Oceania have large potential, some large
Fig. 2 Carbon sequestration
potential in global, tropical,
temperate and boreal forests in
GtC y
−1
. Theoretical potential is
reduced by successive constraints
on forest availability due to land
use for cropping and grazing,
protected area for biodiversity,
and other wood use. The final
values after subtracting wood
use are the estimated potential,
globally at 2.8 GtC y
−1
. The
numbers in the subsequent figures
are consistent with this global
value
250 Climatic Change (2013) 118:245–257
Table 2 As in Table 1, but for six main sub-regions of the world. The classification of these regions follows that of FAO (2005), in which Europe includes Russia, Oceania
includes Indonesia, Australia and New Zealand, North America includes North and Central America and the Caribbeans
Africa Asia Europe North America South America Oceania
Theoretical potential (GtC y
−1
) 2.53 1.57 1.14 1.17 2.78 0.87
-Land use (crop+ pasture) 1.58 (−0.95) 0.65 (−0.92) 0.52 (−0.62) 0.7 (−0.47) 2.05 (−0.73) 0.6 (−0.27)
-Protected (50 % Tropics, 20 % temperate/boreal) 0.79 (−0.79) 0.52 (−0.13) 0.42 (−0.1) 0.56 (−0.14) 1.03 (−1.02) 0.3 (−0.3)
-Other wood use 0.57 (−0.22) 0.42 (−0.1) 0.23 (−0.19) 0.32 (−0.24) 0.9(−0.13) 0.28 (−0.02)
0>Constrained potential (GtC y
−1
)
Country/region potential as percentage of global total WHS potential 21 % 16 % 8 % 11 % 32 % 10 %
Area needed for WHS to achieve the above potential (Mkm
2
) 4.0 4.2 4.2 4.7 5.5 2.0
FFE 2005 (GtC y
−1
) 0.25 3.3 1.5 1.9 0.3 0.2
WHS potential as percentage of FFE 228 % 13 % 15 % 17 % 300 % 140 %
Climatic Change (2013) 118:245–257 251
temperate and boreal countries can also be significant contributors, including the US for
0.14 GtC y
−1
(5 % of world total), Canada 0.09 (3 %), Russia 0.2 (7 %), China 0.14 (5 %),
and Southeast Asia 0.28 (10 %) (Table 3).
We also computed the forest area needed to achieve the corresponding carbon seques-
tration potential. This was done by simply excluding land use, protected areas for biodiver-
sity and wood use (using the above data or scenarios) from the VEGAS model simulated
forest area. The global total area available for WHS is 24.6 million km
2
(Mkm
2
, Table 1),
about half of the total world forest area. Tropical forests account for 10.9 Mkm
2
, temperate
forests for 8 Mkm
2
, and boreal forests for 5.7 Mkm
2
. It is interesting to compare area needed
with carbon sequestration potential. For instance, tropical WHS potential is 1.82 GtC y
−1
,6
times as large as the 0.3 GtC y
−1
potential for boreal forests, but it needs only twice as much
forest area as in the boreal region, reflecting the high productivity of tropical forests.
Our estimated WHS potential of 2.8 GtC y
−1
is a significant amount compared to the
fossil fuel emissions of 8 GtC y
−1
(for the year 2005), and the current deforestation
emissions of 1.2±0.6 GtC y
−1
(van der Werf et al. 2009). However, major uncertainties
exist in our knowledge of the potential wood production rate and the various technical
constraints, human activities and choices. For instance, a land owner may simply choose not
to conduct harvesting in his/her forests, regardless of the income, especially for small land
parcels from which the financial return would be too small in absolute terms. Our estimate
also assumed no disturbance to the remaining forests. In the boreal forest region, global
warming induced thawing is making the traditional winter roads more difficult and costly to
access. The estimate does not, for example, include future changes in either forest produc-
tivity or the forested land base. Continued deforestation pressure in the tropics could reduce
the latter. Elevated atmospheric CO
2
, even assuming stabilization at 450 ppm, could increase
forest productivity. Climate change, even with a global increase in temperature limited to
less than 2 °C, could increase forest productivity in some areas and decrease it in others.
3.2 A ‘bottom-up’estimate
We now turn to a ‘bottom-up’perspective on the potential of WHS. We assume current
roundwood harvest and subsequent long term storage as a proxy for WHS potential
constrained, to first approximation, by land availability, forest productivity, cost of
Fig. 3 As in Fig. 2, but for
six main world regions
252 Climatic Change (2013) 118:245–257
Table 3 As in Table 1, but for a few selected countries and region
US Canada EU27 Russia China Southeast Asia
Theoretical potential (GtC y
−1
) 0.73 0.21 0.5 0.61 0.72 0.8
-Land use 0.38 (−0.35) 0.17 (−0.04) 0.21 (−0.29) 0.3 (−0.31) 0.23 (−0.49) 0.66 (−0.14)
-Protected (50 % Tropics, 20 % temperate/boreal) 0.3 (−0.08) 0.14 (−0.03) 0.17 (−0.04) 0.24 (−0.06) 0.18 (−0.05) 0.33 (−0.33)
-Other wood use 0.14 (−0.16) 0.09 (−0.05) 0.05 (−0.12) 0.2(−0.04) 0.14 (−0.04) 0.28 (−0.05)
0>Constrained potential (GtC y
-1
)
Country/region potential as percentage of global total WHS potential 5 % 3 % 2 % 7 % 5 % 10 %
Area needed for WHS to achieve the above potential (Mkm
2
) 2.0 2.0 1.1 4.0 2.0 1.4
FFE 2005 (GtC y
−1
) 1.59 0.15 1.1 0.41 1.53 0.45
WHS potential as percentage of FFE 9 % 57 % 5 % 49 % 9 % 62 %
Climatic Change (2013) 118:245–257 253
extraction, etc. Approximately half of the current 0.9 GtC y
−1
global wood harvest is
industrial roundwood; the rest is fuelwood (FAO 2010). The fuelwood is consumed
relatively quickly andmost of the carbon returned to the atmosphere as CO
2
.Carbonisalsolost
during processing and conversion of the industrial roundwood (Ingerson 2009), and the
growing fraction of paper and wood-based panel products have relatively short half-lives
(Winjum et al. 1998). Only about 25 % (20–30 %) of delivered wood harvest is sequestered
in long-lived products or landfills (e.g., Winjum et al. 1998;Skog2008;Ingerson2009). We
estimate accordingly that current global wood product sequestration is only on the order
0.1 GtC y
−1
(0.9 GtC y
−1
×0.5×0.2500.1 GtC y
−1
). Winjum et al. (1998) estimated a compa-
rable global sequestration in wood products of 0.139 GtC y
−1
in 1990. Hashimoto et al.
(Hashimoto et al. 2002) estimated a global sequestration in wood products of 0.217 GtC y
−1
for the decade 1990–1999.
Reducing waste at timber harvest and in the processing of wood products, com-
bined with management to reduce the burning and decay of wood products in and
outside of landfills, could increase current wood product sequestration. Similarly, a
shift in demand for fuelwood to alternative non-fossil energy sources such as solar
and wind could make more of the total wood harvest available for WHS. Reduction
in the demand for paper products could also make more of the industrial roundwood
harvest available for sequestration. Allowing, speculatively, for an increase of up to 5-
fold through these mechanisms leads to an estimate of WHS potential of 0.5 GtC y
−1
.
Note that this would require utilizing part of the harvest loss which is at least 30 %
more than the 0.9 GtC y
−1
(FAO 2005). This range of 0.1–0.5 GtC y
−1
is consistent
with an independent estimate of 0.33 GtC y
−1
(Lenton 2010), based on the simple
assumption that present forest harvest felling loss can all be buried.
One of Pacala and Socolow’s(2004)“stabilization wedges”amountsto1GtCy
−1
in 2054.
Achieving this target for credible consideration as a mitigation strategy implies a 10-fold
increase in current rates of carbon sequestration in long-lived wood products and burial in
landfills. Again, achieving even this more modest goal (a 10 times increaserather than 30times)
seems to us unlikely through increases in efficiency, wood product management and energy
substitution alone. An increase in wood harvest would likely be required. If we assume,
unrealistically, but for the purpose of argument, perfect efficiency (zero carbon loss) during
the processing of wood product and long-lived sequestration (minimal decay) of all wood
products, the target of 1 GtC y
−1
could be achieved by a doubling of the approxi-
mately 1 GtC y
−1
global wood harvest (recall that approximately half of that harvest is
consumed as fuelwood). This doubling could be achieved by harvesting wood at a harvesting
intensity of 1.2 tC ha
−1
y
−1
, over a forestarea of 8 Mkm
2
(800 Mha). Shifts of fuelwood demand
to non-fossil energy sources would allow for some loss of carbon during processing and in the
decay of wood products. Alternatively a doubling of wood harvest assuming the current
demand of approximately 50 % of that harvest for fuelwood and the current allocation of
industrial roundwood to various short and long-lived wood products (including burial in
landfills) results in a estimated sequestration of only 0.2 GtC y
−1
. Nevertheless, on the
assumption that some combination of increase in wood harvest, energy substitutes for fuel-
wood, management of waste during harvest and processing and management of carbon loss
from the resulting wood products could realize a 10-fold increase in current rates of carbon
sequestration in long-lived wood products, we set an upper bound on the bottom-up estimate of
WHS potential of 1 GtC y
−1
. Combining our top-down and bottom-up analyses we thus arrive
at an estimate for the potential of WHS in the range of 1–3GtCy
−1
. This is in the middle of a
0.5–4GtCy
−1
range for a number of terrestrial carbon sequestration mechanisms estimated by
Lenton ((Lenton 2010).
254 Climatic Change (2013) 118:245–257
4 Discussion and conclusions
Using the coarse wood production rate of the world’s forests and the constraints from land
use, protected areas for biodiversity, accessibility, and other wood use in a top-down
approach, we estimated a 2.8 GtC y
−1
carbon sequestration potential with wood harvest
and storage. A bottom-up approach based on a plausible expansion of the current world
wood harvest rate yielded a 1 GtC y
−1
sequestration potential with WHS. We thus estimate a
range of 1–3 GtC y
−1
sequestration potential with WHS.
The implementation of such a scheme at our estimated lower potential of 1 GtC y
−1
would imply a doubling of the current world wood harvest rate, which can be realized at a
moderate harvest intensity of 1.2 tC ha
−1
y
−1
over an area of 8 Mkm
2
, and possibly a much
smaller area with higher harvest intensity or fast growing plantations. Such an expansion
would be a giant leap for traditional forestry, but it is not inconceivable, and in fact possible
in light of large potential impacts of climate change, including those on forests themselves,
and the high cost of CO
2
reduction by other means.
There will be a broad range of technical, environmental, and socioeconomic issues. Our
estimates of carbon sequestration potential do not yet take into account many such con-
straints because the limited available information. A number of potential issues of managing
forests for WHS were discussed by Zeng (2008), including nutrient loss, disturbance to the
forest floor, biodiversity, cost, lifetime of stored wood, and unintended consequences. Thus,
many tradeoffs of such forest management schemes need to be carefully evaluated. One
possible issue of ‘carbon debt’has been highlighted recently in which the initial carbon loss
from forest conversion for biofuel production would take a long-time to be ‘repaid’by the
benefits (Fargione et al. 2008). In WHS, forest is maintained so one can expect much less
carbon loss but careful management and monitoring are essential. Most of these issues will
need significant research and experimentation. Many of these issues are not unique to WHS,
but are encountered in forest management in general and more broadly in climate mitigation
and adaptation. While there have been many examples of irresponsible logging in the past,
best forest management practices have been increasingly used with minimum negative
environmental consequences. It is also important to recognize that WHS for carbon seques-
tration is merely one more option to the existing suite of forest management and product use
choices (Ryan et al. 2010), but it nonetheless adds a new dimension to the portfolio. This
new use of wood will likely reshape the current timber market. It is critically important to
devise strategies that will maximize the overall socioeconomic, environmental and climate
benefits while minimizing any potential downsides.
We know of no wood harvest and storage operation as envisioned here that has been
conducted purposefully for long-term carbon sequestration. Because it does not involve truly
unproven technology, we argue that WHS is sufficiently promising to warrant more evaluation
and testing of its feasibility and sustainability as a climate mitigation and adaptation strategy.
Acknowledgments We are grateful for discussion and critiques from Gregg Marland, Lianhong Gu, Brian
Cook, Peter Read, Ross Salawitch, Steve Smith, Cesar Izzaraulde, Dalia Abbas, Richard Birdsey, Linda
Heath, Yude Pan, Ben Bond-Lamberty, Tris West, Brent Sohngen, Tony Janetos, Fritz Scholz, George Hurtt,
Ruth DeFries, Thomas Schelling, Freeman Dyson, Paul Crutzen, Graham Stinson, Neil Sampson, Ruben
Lubowski, Alexander Golub, Matt Pearson, Roger Sedjo, Steven Hamburg, and Ian Noble. This work resulted
in part from a workshop entitled “Ecological carbon sequestration via wood burial and storage: A strategy for
climate mitigation and adaptation”, held at the Heinz Center, Washington DC during September 9–10, 2010.
This work was supported by NSF grant AGS-1129088, and NOAA grant NA10OAR4310248. AWK and
SDW acknowledge support from the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE), Office of Science, Biological and
Environmental Research (BER) program. Oak Ridge National Laboratory is managed by UT-Battelle, LLC,
for the DOE under contract DE-AC05-00OR22725.
Climatic Change (2013) 118:245–257 255
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