Managing risk in forest-based climate change mitigation

Forest carbon sequestration has garnered the attention of policy-makers as a bridging strategy for mitigating the atmospheric carbon dioxide concentration._ While a forest carbon offset is a small piece of the global carbon cycle, once commoditized it must be stored in a given geographic location for a predetermined period of time._ Thus, local ecological context and management decisions influence the market value._ In the scientific community, we often study the carbon cycle in large spatial and long temporal scales, leading to a scale mismatch with the information needed by offset protocol developers._ However, the scientific community can employ tools and techniques used in global carbon cycle research to address policy-relevant questions at market scales.

Contact

  Jason Hill
  ecologyservice@psu.edu