Skip to main content

ORIGINAL RESEARCH article

Front. For. Glob. Change
Sec. Forest Management
Volume 7 - 2024 | doi: 10.3389/ffgc.2024.1507554
This article is part of the Research Topic Landscape management can promote socioecological benefits and leverage environmental markets View all 3 articles

Carbon Finance for Forest Resilience in California

Provisionally accepted
Micah Elias Micah Elias 1*Ethan Yackulic Ethan Yackulic 2Katharyn Duffy Katharyn Duffy 3Phil Saksa Phil Saksa 1Daniel L Sanchez Daniel L Sanchez 4Nicholas Pevzner Nicholas Pevzner 5Spencer Plumb Spencer Plumb 6Jillian Dyzynski Jillian Dyzynski 7Carina Bracer Carina Bracer 8
  • 1 Blue Forest Conservation, Sacramento, United States
  • 2 Northern Arizona University, Flagstaff, Arizona, United States
  • 3 Vibrant Planet, Truckee, CA, United States
  • 4 University of California, Berkeley, Berkeley, California, United States
  • 5 University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, United States
  • 6 Verra, Washington D.C., United States
  • 7 American Forest Foundation, Washington D.C., United States
  • 8 National Forest Foundation, Washington D.C., United States

The final, formatted version of the article will be published soon.

    Restoring a resilient forest structure in California’s American River watershed in the Sierra Nevada mountains can generate up to $6,100 per acre in carbon revenue from increased forest carbon and market-ready biomass utilization pathways, potentially fully funding forest management. Employing a dynamic performance benchmark (DPB) framework, this study models the impacts of restoring resilience to high-risk forests via forest thinning followed by prescribed fire. These practices show an initial carbon cost, but ultimately reduce carbon emissions from wildfire and increase carbon storage compared to a no-treatment counterfactual scenario by 35 tCO2e per acre on average, with market-ready biomass utilization pathways adding another 6 - 23 tCO2e average benefit per acre. Treatments enhance carbon stability by shifting carbon storage from dense, overcrowded small trees to more dispersed, fire-resilient large trees and reduces fire severity (flame length) by 78% five years post-treatment. Compared to pretreatment levels, treatment decreases the number of trees on the landscape by 74% while increasing carbon storage by 6% at the end of the 25-year simulation. To reduce investor risk into nature-based solutions focused on increasing carbon stability in fire adapted forests and generate carbon revenue from fuel treatments, accurate predictive tools are needed. To maximize certainty of carbon benefits, landscape level treatments, DPBs, and ex-post carbon crediting will be critical. This study shows that carbon revenue from traditional markets or novel carbon contribution programs can help close the funding gap for forest restoration in California while underscoring the need for innovative conservation finance mechanisms to support ecosystem resilience and climate mitigation goals.

    Keywords: Carbon finance, carbon markets, Nature-based solutions, Forest resilience, forest management, Wildfire mitigation, biomass utilization, dynamic performance benchmark (DPB)

    Received: 07 Oct 2024; Accepted: 31 Dec 2024.

    Copyright: © 2024 Elias, Yackulic, Duffy, Saksa, Sanchez, Pevzner, Plumb, Dyzynski and Bracer. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.

    * Correspondence: Micah Elias, Blue Forest Conservation, Sacramento, United States

    Disclaimer: All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article or claim that may be made by its manufacturer is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.