Science Findings, Issue 116, September 2009. We're All in This Together: Decisionmaking to Address Climate Change in a Complex World

摘要

Forests significantly influence the global carbon budget: they store massive amounts of carbon in their wood and soil, they sequester atmospheric carbon as they grow, and they emit carbon as a greenhouse gas when harvested or converted to another use. These factors make forest conservation and management important components of most strategies for adapting to and lessening the impacts of climate change. Developing these strategies is complicated by the constant interplay between forest ecosystems and climate, which impacts the costs and effectiveness of mitigation. Researchers at the PNW Station have developed novel methods for integrating the complex relationships between human decisions, forest ecosystems, and the climate system. Their work shows that there is substantial room for increased carbon storage on public and private forest land. Sequestering large amounts of forest carbon, however, could require significant funding for incentives to induce private owners to conserve forests, which during the 1990s were converted to developed uses at a rate of more than 1 million acres per year. Because climate change is such a far reaching topic, policy alternatives must be evaluated in terms of landuse changes, forest management strategies, and connections to other sectors of the economy.