Forest fire prevention efforts can damage carbon sinks

Forest fire prevention efforts can lessen the carbon sink potential of the Pacific Northwest forests. Forestry researchers at Oregon State University caution that efforts to reduce fuels for possible forest fires could harm the potential of the forests of the Coast Range and West side of the Cascade Mountains to sequester carbon.

“Fuel reduction treatments should be forgone if forest ecosystems are to provide maximal amelioration of atmospheric carbon dioxide over the next 100 years,” the study authors wrote in their conclusion. “If fuel reduction treatments are effective in reducing fire severities in the western hemlock, Douglas-fir forests of the west Cascades and the western hemlock, Sitka spruce forests of the Coast Range, it will come at the cost of long-term carbon storage, even if harvested materials are used as biofuels.”

The new study found that in a Coast Range stand, if you removed solid woody biofuels for reduction of catastrophic fire risks and used those for fuel, it would take 169 years before such usage reached a break-even point in carbon sequestration. The study showed that if the same material were used in even less efficient production of cellulosic ethanol, it would take 339 years.

The study authors concluded that fuel reduction may still make more sense in east-side Cascade Range and other similar forests, but that the west-side Cascades and Coast Range have little sensitivity to forest fuel reduction treatments – and might be best utilized for their high carbon sequestration capacities.


- Katrice R. Jalbuena