Attribution of net carbon change by disturbance type across forest lands of the conterminous United States
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RESEARCH
Attribution of net carbon change by disturbance type across forest lands of the conterminous United States N. L. Harris1,5*†, S. C. Hagen2†, S. S. Saatchi3, T. R. H. Pearson1, C. W. Woodall4, G. M. Domke4, B. H. Braswell2, B. F. Walters4, S. Brown1, W. Salas2, A. Fore3 and Y. Yu3
Abstract Background: Locating terrestrial sources and sinks of carbon (C) will be critical to developing strategies that contribute to the climate change mitigation goals of the Paris Agreement. Here we present spatially resolved estimates of net C change across United States (US) forest lands between 2006 and 2010 and attribute them to natural and anthropogenic processes. Results: Forests in the conterminous US sequestered −460 ± 48 Tg C year−1, while C losses from disturbance averaged 191 ± 10 Tg C year−1. Combining estimates of net C losses and gains results in net carbon change of −269 ± 49 Tg C year−1. New forests gained −8 ± 1 Tg C year−1, while deforestation resulted in losses of 6 ± 1 Tg C year−1. Forest land remaining forest land lost 185 ± 10 Tg C year−1 to various disturbances; these losses were compensated by net carbon gains of −452 ± 48 Tg C year−1. C loss in the southern US was highest (105 ± 6 Tg C year−1) with the highest fractional contributions from harvest (92%) and wind (5%). C loss in the western US (44 ± 3 Tg C year−1) was due predominantly to harvest (66%), fire (15%), and insect damage (13%). The northern US had the lowest C loss (41 ± 2 Tg C year−1) with the most significant proportional contributions from harvest (86%), insect damage (9%), and conversion (3%). Taken together, these disturbances reduced the estimated potential C sink of US forests by 42%. Conclusion: The framework presented here allows for the integration of ground and space observations to more fully inform US forest C policy and monitoring efforts. Keywords: Forests, Disturbance, Harvest, Insects, Fire, Drought, Greenhouse gas, Land use, Climate change, FIA, UNFCCC Background The 2015 Paris Climate Change Agreement, with consensus from 192 signatories, calls for achieving a balance between anthropogenic emissions by sources and removals by sinks in the second half of this century [1]. Forests are currently responsible for the capture and storage of an estimated 25% of global anthropogenic emissions [2]. If Paris goals are to be achieved, further enhancement of *Correspondence: [email protected] † N. L. Harris and S. C. Hagen contributed equally to this work 5 Present Address: Forests Program, World Resources Institute, 10 G Street NE Suite 800, Washington, DC 20002, USA Full list of author information is available at the end of the article
forest-based carbon (C) removals to mitigate emissions in other sectors will be a critical component of any collective global strategy [3], especially as no alternative sink technologies have yet been proven at scale. Thus, spatially identifying terrestrial sources and sinks of carbon, and understanding them well enough to predict how they will respond to management decisions or fut
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