As consensus grows about the serious impacts of global climate change, the important role of forests in carbon storage is increasingly recognized. U.S. forests currently capture about 10 percent of the carbon released from our country’s use of fossil fuels.  They do this by accumulating (or sequestering) a growing “bank account” of forest carbon stores, but the rate of growth of this account has begun to slow in recent years.  Reforestation of former cropland and restoration of depleted timberland were responsible for much of the growth in the U.S. forest carbon pool during the twentieth century.  As this process reaches limits and development sprawls into more rural forested areas, the sequestration services provided by our forests are now in jeopardy.  U.S. forests have the potential to capture an even higher portion of our industrial emissions, but only if we prevent forest conversion and development and manage our forests to maximize carbon stores.

In U.S. Forest Carbon and Climate Change, we explore:

1. The role of forests worldwide in sequestering carbon, and thus mitigating global climate change;
2. The current balance of the forest carbon “bank account” in the United States and trends in forest acreage and carbon sequestration capacity;
3. The complexities of measuring forest carbon, particularly using such tools as inventories and registries;
4. The pros and cons of policies to boost forest carbon: cap-and-trade programs that allow trading of forest-based carbon offsets, and public subsidies to private landowners who boost carbon stores;
5. The complexities of three specific forest-based strategies often proposed for mitigating climate change: managing for fast-growing young forests, increasing carbon stored in wood products, and increasing use of wood biomass fuels; and
6. Approaches for boosting forest carbon that have many secondary benefits for the public and the environment as well: forest preservation, restoration, and sustainable management. 

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