Impact of Forest Harvest Regimes on the Tradeoff between Roundwood Production and Carbon Sequestration

Pui-Yu Ling, Department of Geographical Sciences, University of Maryland, pyling@umd.edu (Presenter)
Caren Dymond, Competitiveness and Innovation Branch, Government of British Columbia, caren.dymond@gov.bc.ca
Weimin Xi, Department of Biological and Health Sciences, Texas A&M University-Kingsville, weimin.xi@tamuk.edu

The two ecosystem services that forests provide are carbon sequestration and roundwood production. Currently foresters only receive payment from harvesting roundwood. If there is a subsidy on carbon sequestered by the forest and carbon stored in roundwood products, foresters are going to change their forest harvesting regime. This study examines the impact of different harvesting regimes on forest structure, forest carbon dynamics, and roundwood production. We apply the landscape forest succession model, Landis-ii, in the Grandfather District in Western North Carolina to understand the impact on forest ecosystem when there is a price on carbon. The Grandfather District is a species-rich region in the Southern Appalachian. Forest disturbance maps derived by the VCT algorithm show the forest in the area is managed by different harvesting regimes by different types of land owners. The species-rich environment and the different land use types in the area can be used to demonstrate the interaction and the competition between species in places where different harvest regimes are applied.

Presentation Type:  Poster

Session:  Theme 4: Human influence on global ecosystems   (Mon 4:30 PM)

Associated Project(s): 

• Goward, Samuel: US Forest Disturbance History from Landsat ...details
• Huang, Cheng: Assessment of North American Industrial Forests: Disturbances, Biomass Extraction, and Growth Vigor ...details
• Huang, Cheng: Integration of long term Landsat observations with DESDynI measurements for monitoring terrestrial carbon fluxes within and beyond the DESDynI mission ...details
• Huang, Cheng: Role of Forest Disturbance and Regrowth in the US Carbon Budget ...details

Poster Location ID: 69