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      Aboveground live tree carbon stock and change in forests of conterminous United States: influence of stand age

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          Abstract

          Background

          Sequestration of carbon on forest land is a common and practical component within many climate action plans developed by state or municipal governments. Initial planning often identifies the general magnitude of sequestration expected given the scope of the project. Because age plays a key role in forest carbon dynamics, we summarize both the carbon stock and accumulation rates in live trees by age class and region, allowing managers and policymakers to assess the influence of forest age class structure on forest carbon storage as represented in current inventories. State-level information is provided in supplementary tables.

          Results

          Average regional aboveground live tree carbon stocks (represented on a per area basis) range from 11.6 tC/ha in the Great Plains to 130 tC/ha in the Pacific Northwest West (west-side of Cascades) and increase with age in all regions, although in three regions carbon stock declined in the oldest age class. Regional average annual net change in live aboveground tree carbon varies from a low of − 0.18 tC /ha/yr in the Rocky Mountain South region to a high value of 1.74 tC/ha/yr in Pacific Northwest West. In all regions except Rocky Mountain South, accumulation rates are highest in the younger age classes and decline with age, with older age classes in several western regions showing negative rates. In the Southeast and Pacific Northwest West, intermediate age classes exhibit lower rates, likely due to harvesting activity.

          Conclusions

          Aboveground live tree carbon stocks increase and rates of average change decrease with age with few exceptions; this pattern holds when examining hardwood and softwood types individually. Because multiple forest management objectives are often considered and tradeoffs need to be assessed, we recommend considering both measures—standing stock and average annual change—of carbon storage. The relative importance of each component depends on management and policy objectives and the time frame related to those objectives. Harvesting and natural disturbance also affect forest carbon stock and change and may need to be considered if developing projections of potential carbon storage. We present forest carbon summaries at a scale and scope to meet information needs of managers and policymakers.

          Supplementary Information

          The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1186/s13021-023-00227-z.

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          Most cited references30

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          The strategy of ecosystem development.

          E P Odum (1969)
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            Old-growth forests as global carbon sinks.

            Old-growth forests remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere at rates that vary with climate and nitrogen deposition. The sequestered carbon dioxide is stored in live woody tissues and slowly decomposing organic matter in litter and soil. Old-growth forests therefore serve as a global carbon dioxide sink, but they are not protected by international treaties, because it is generally thought that ageing forests cease to accumulate carbon. Here we report a search of literature and databases for forest carbon-flux estimates. We find that in forests between 15 and 800 years of age, net ecosystem productivity (the net carbon balance of the forest including soils) is usually positive. Our results demonstrate that old-growth forests can continue to accumulate carbon, contrary to the long-standing view that they are carbon neutral. Over 30 per cent of the global forest area is unmanaged primary forest, and this area contains the remaining old-growth forests. Half of the primary forests (6 x 10(8) hectares) are located in the boreal and temperate regions of the Northern Hemisphere. On the basis of our analysis, these forests alone sequester about 1.3 +/- 0.5 gigatonnes of carbon per year. Thus, our findings suggest that 15 per cent of the global forest area, which is currently not considered when offsetting increasing atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations, provides at least 10 per cent of the global net ecosystem productivity. Old-growth forests accumulate carbon for centuries and contain large quantities of it. We expect, however, that much of this carbon, even soil carbon, will move back to the atmosphere if these forests are disturbed.
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              Carbon cycling and storage in world forests: biome patterns related to forest age

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                Author and article information

                Contributors
                coeli.hoover@usda.gov
                Journal
                Carbon Balance Manag
                Carbon Balance Manag
                Carbon Balance and Management
                Springer International Publishing (Cham )
                1750-0680
                16 April 2023
                16 April 2023
                December 2023
                : 18
                : 7
                Affiliations
                GRID grid.472551.0, ISNI 0000 0004 0404 3120, USDA Forest Service, Northern Research Station, ; 271 Mast Road, Durham, NH 09824 USA
                Article
                227
                10.1186/s13021-023-00227-z
                10108445
                37062006
                4d3d5542-1443-44c5-b284-1ce21fbb092a
                © This is a U.S. Government work and not under copyright protection in the US; foreign copyright protection may apply 2023

                Open AccessThis article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article's Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article's Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/. The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver ( http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated in a credit line to the data.

                History
                : 11 October 2022
                : 6 April 2023
                Categories
                Research
                Custom metadata
                © The Author(s) 2023

                Environmental change
                forest carbon accumulation,aboveground live tree carbon,stand age,average annual change,forest inventory and analysis

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