- Hello, everyone.
This is Mark Cannella
with the University of Vermont Extension.
Thanks for joining us tonight.
We will hang out on pause for just a minute or two
as other attendees join through the lobby.
So hang tight,
and the program will begin in a couple of minutes.
All right, a couple minutes after seven.
We might as well get started,
and wouldn't doubt we'll have a few new faces join.
Again, this is Mark Cannella,
University of Vermont Extension.
Thanks for joining us tonight.
I've got a great webinar planned with Dr. Tony D'Amato.
A couple of announcements before we get started.
As always, we do have closed captioning available.
If you go into the chat bubble,
which will be on your top or side ribbon,
look for the little cartoon bubble,
and our closed caption link should be right there.
We've got everyone muted on audio and video
for the beginning portion, at least.
If the presenter wants to take any questions,
we'll just get cued up and we can unlock people's audio.
But people are welcome and encouraged
to use the chat box at any point during the session.
We've got a couple moderators on.
We may chime in.
We also may hold some of those questions until the end,
but don't hesitate to use the chat bubble.
Let's see, one or two more announcements.
We've got one more webinar on October 27th.
That'll be the last webinar for this series,
and that'll be Northeast Forest Land Tax Programs,
coming up in two weeks.
And then, also, a heads up
that the planning is underway,
fingers crossed on the dynamics these days,
but the planning is underway for Vermont Maple Conference.
That should be near the end of the first week
or the beginning of the second week of December.
So I encourage you to check out
the UVM Extension Maple webpage
and watch for announcements on that,
as well as your own regions.
I'm sure there's other conferences coming up
in different parts of the U.S.
So with that, I'm gonna introduce our presenter.
We're glad to have Dr. Tony D'Amato here tonight.
Dr. D'Amato is the director of the forestry program
with the Rubenstein School of Environment
and Natural Resources at University of Vermont.
And a great topic, maple forests and carbon.
So we're looking forward to the session,
and I'm gonna hand it off to Tony now.
- Thanks, Mark, and thanks, folks,
for logging on tonight.
And so what I'll be doing this evening
for the next half hour or so,
is just giving some broad background on carbon,
how it intersects with forests
and, in particular, how it might either be
a compatible objective for sugarbush management,
as well as possibly something you can enhance
through the management of sugarbushes.
And so, I recognize that we have a wide range
of backgrounds in terms of forest carbon
and in forestry on the webinar here.
And so my hope is that some of this will be review
for some of you and for others,
hopefully there'll be some new information
that you can integrate into your work
because clearly carbon and forest is a topic that's growing.
And as many are aware of,
is one that's increasingly being monetized
and thought of as a way for landowners
and others involved with land management
to increase both the revenue stream from their forest,
but also importantly,
conserve forest land and maintain a lot of those benefits.
So what I'm gonna be doing this evening
is kind of giving just some basics
in terms of forest carbon.
Again, I recognize that many on this webinar
have a good understanding from that
about how forest carbon works,
but just to review and make sure all of us
are using similar terminology and understanding
what we're getting at.
And a lot of what I'll talk about today will actually borrow
from a outreach pamphlet that we developed
a couple of years ago with UMass extension,
Paul Catanzaro in particular,
really was instrumental in leading this.
And those that are interested in downloading a PDF
of that can go to masswoods.org/carbon
and grab a copy of that.
But I'll really be relying heavily on that
as a way to just talk through some of the basics
of forest carbon, and also expand upon
some of the recommendations in that,
that work in terms of how we might manage a sugarbush
with carbon in mind,
both to enhance and maintain those benefits,
as well as throughout really recognizing that carbon
is one of many things that we look to sugarbushes and forest
more broadly as an objective.
And so, recognizing that there's trade-offs
with any objective in terms of maximizing
one versus the other.
One minor technical note,
a couple of times during the webinar, to break things up,
certainly keep you awake and maybe talking less,
I think those two are correlated,
we'll be using a menti.com.
So either on your phone or on the computer
that you're actually watching this webinar on,
you can just go to the website, menti.com.
And then when we get to that part of the webinar,
we'll be doing...
I'll give you a number to enter in
and that'll allow you to do some interactive carbon quizzing
to keep you at least partially awake as we go through this.
So in terms of forest and carbon,
and why are we in a Maple webinar series
talking about carbon,
the real kind of ultimate reason for this
is that finally folks have recognized
that there is nothing better on land and forest
when it relates to carbon.
And carbon sequestration, carbon storage,
all of those terms you hear have always occurred in forest,
and have always been a very important process in forest.
But as we are grappling with the challenges
of rising atmospheric CO2,
and trying to figure out ways to offset those emissions
and try to minimize and reduce the level of warming
and changes in weather patterns that we're seeing,
more and more folks,
whether it's foresters or politicians are recognizing
that one of the ultimate natural climate solutions we have
is to try to maximize the amount of carbon
that's in forest and on the land,
and minimize the amount that's in the atmosphere.
And so if there's a marine biologist on this call,
they could pull rank and say that oceans actually
do store a bit more carbon than forest.
But on land, forests are the best thing we have
certainly relative to any other land use vegetation cover,
you name it.
Forests really are so critical.
And when we look at the national kind of scale,
like how much of our yearly,
or even daily emissions of fossil fuels are offset
by forests, most folks estimate that 10 to 20%
of our emissions, kind of at the national scale
are being offset by forests.
And 100 would be even better,
but obviously we have big chunks of the U.S.
This map here is just showing kind of a density of carbon
with places like the Northeast where many of us reside
having a pretty high amount of carbon in our forest,
certainly doing a lot of the polling of that weight
as it relates to offsetting those fossil fuels.
Vermont, the state that I live in,
and several others I know on this webinar live in,
because we're a rural state,
but a very forested state,
up to 60% depending on the year of the emissions
by Vermonters are actually offset
by the forest and the state.
And so, it's really kind of a tremendous benefit
to those of us living in a state
that we maybe can feel a little bit better
about our emissions,
just given we have this wonderful forested landscape.
And so a lot of what I'll be describing and the terminology,
it's not new, but certainly more and more folks
are interested in it because of this global recognition
of the importance of forest and carbon,
including forest that are being used
for maple syrup production.
So there are some terms that we're gonna go through
that are really important to be clear on,
because given that carbon has become
such a popular topic in the media,
certainly in different environmental groups,
in forestry lexicon
oftentimes terms are used interchangeably
and can actually confuse matters
in terms of how best to manage forests
and how best to think about forests and our sugarbush
in the context of, if I'm trying to maximize carbon benefits
and trying to really kind of obtain some of those,
those kind of additional levels of storage and offset.
And so the first key term that we often use
is this term, carbon pool.
And a good way to think about this,
it's similar to your bank account.
Basically it's capable of both having money added to it,
as well as money loss from it.
And what we're really hoping over time is that those pools
are growing similar to your bank account,
that they're kind of accumulating carbon.
And so we often focus a lot on kind of what's the size
of the pool out in the forest and kind of how much of that,
how much that is kind of retaining carbon
versus losing carbon.
That whole process of retention really gets to a term
that we hear quite often known as carbon storage.
And so just how much of that carbon, let's just say,
we're looking at this carbon pool of soil,
how much of that carbon that's in the soil
is actually being retained or stored over time.
And so storage is really that, how permanent,
or at least relatively stable is that aspect of the pool.
And then the final term that we often hear, and again,
unfortunately used interchangeably with carbon storage
is this term, sequestration.
And really, sequestration is a rate,
kind of how fast and rapidly is actually CO2
being pulled out of the atmosphere by plants
and being fixed and turned into parts
and kind of starches and sugars and other things
in that tree, and maintaining that tree structure
and allowing that tree to grow
and accumulate carbon over time.
And so, sequestration really is that rate
that carbon is being removed from the atmosphere.
So, three really key terms that all have a big impact
on just how any forest might look in terms
of its benefit from a carbon standpoint.
So if we look at carbon pools again,
think of these as kind of the size
of that forest bank account
and kind of how much carbon
is in that kind of account at any given point in time.
There are five kinds of forest carbon pools
we really think about in terms
of how our management activities might impact them.
And so the one that we often are most interested in,
kind of what we call the live above ground pools,
so it's kind of all the trees, the shrubs,
all the other plants.
And as we'll talk a bit more in a bit,
this tends to be a very large pool.
You think about just the massive trees,
how much they grow,
it's a reason why forest or so much more carbon
than grasslands or prairies or other ecosystems
where the vegetation is quite diminutive
relative to a forest.
Related to kind of above ground live pools.
Obviously those trees have have root systems.
And so again, that below ground component
is quite critical for both stabilizing
the soil carbon pools, but also certainly serving
as a kind of a below ground ability for storing carbon
in that root system.
And as those trees die, become either snags,
so standing dead trees, or dead wood.
That live above ground pool is transferred
into these kinds of pools of dead wood,
that again, even though are decaying
and emitting some carbon,
collectively, that rate of emission is pretty low.
And so it's still is an important pool of carbon
being retained on that site.
Similarly leaf litter, things coming off of the tree,
those accumulate over time.
And sugarbushes, given just the decomposition rates
of maple leaves because of the quality of that litter,
often the leaf litter might not be as thick
as you would see in a spruce forest or a pine forest,
or that it might accumulate a bit more.
But nevertheless, litter layer is certainly
an important part of what's out there for carbon pool
in any forest.
And then finally the one that certainly is quite important,
and we'll talk more about this,
are belowground or kind of soil pool.
And so the carbon that's being decomposed
integrate into the soil layer,
really important pool that exists across the landscape.
And so if we look at this
in terms of just how that breaks down,
this is just taking from inventory data
and estimates of carbon for the Northeastern United States.
If I were to take an average northern hardwood forest,
so maple, birch, beach forest,
similar to what many of your sugarbushes
are compositionally, or at least the potential
for those sites and break down how much
of the carbon in that forest is actually stored
in these different components,
what we generally see is roughly half of that carbon
is in of live above ground.
So it's a big part of that carbon pool,
both kind of the live aboveground parts are important.
Five metric tons, so 7% is in belowground live carbon.
And then the remainder is either in dead tissue
or importantly in the soil.
And so when we think about forest carbon
and in managing forest carbon,
we have a lot of influence on the above-ground piece,
but nevertheless, we don't want to have a dramatic impact
on the soils because that's such a big stable pool
that really is hard to kind of replenish
once we've lost carbon from that.
And so, a lot of what we'll talk about
as we get into managing for carbon
is not only thinking about how we're affecting
the aboveground portion, so cutting trees or managing trees,
but also making sure that we're not causing impact
to those belowground portion.
So certainly a key part.
So the last bit of terms I wanna bring into this,
really deals with carbon markets.
And the reason I'm bringing this up is that,
as I mentioned in the introduction
a lot of folks are interested in carbon,
just out of the goodness of our hearts,
because we wanna sequester CO2
and minimize greenhouse gas
or offset greenhouse gas emissions,
and try to kind of reduce the rate of warming, et cetera,
but there is some financial incentive
for carbon these days related to carbon markets.
And so basically getting paid as a landowner
to either maximize carbon benefit
or certainly provide carbon benefit from your land base.
And so the three terms that we often think about
when it comes to carbon markets, and again,
I recognize that some in this webinar
are well versed in this, and how this all works,
and this is not a webinar on carbon markets
so I won't get too in the weeds on this.
But just so folks are comfortable
or at least reviewing these terms
if you're already familiar with them,
that when a landowner, whether it be you with a sugarbush
or properties that you're working with,
if they're interested in entering into a carbon market,
essentially the way that that carbon
is gonna be monetized and that land owner
is gonna get paid is that,
they wanna see you kind of sequestering
and storing more carbon on that land base
relative to what you would have done
if you had not had been enrolled in that market.
And so, essentially what we often are concerned with
is this additionality, kind of how much more carbon storage
is happening on your land base,
relative to what would have been your planned activities
for that forest.
And so a simple example might be,
this land owner here
if they were to enter into a carbon market, they might say,
from this point forward,
we are never gonna cut another tree in our forest.
And so, our traditional management
was that we harvest the trees
and now we're gonna enroll in carbon markets,
you can get paid for
kind of that above and beyond carbon we're now storing
because we're not cutting trees.
Or we might modify our harvesting behavior
to increase that.
And so it's a key element because it's really,
this is the agreement you're making that you're gonna be
kind of storing carbon above and beyond
what you would have done if you kept doing
kind of your typical management.
And so, for many conservation organizations,
it's often conserving that land
and basically extinguishing the harvesting on that land.
The key element of that though,
and one that's not talked about enough
and one, I think that is really critical
is that carbon is a global issue,
climate change is a global issue.
And so, if in your backyard, or if in your home state,
like the one I'm sitting in,
many landowners kind of doubled down on,
I'm gonna get into carbon markets
and much of what I'm gonna do
is basically reduce or eliminate the amount of harvesting
I'm doing from my land in the name of carbon,
incentivizing carbon payments.
You're essentially kind of shifting the wood product needs
that you have.
So you're using wood every day to other parts
of the country, other parts of the globe.
And so kind of pushing kind of year wood needs
and your carbon impact to other areas.
And so, we often think of that as a leakage
where even though you're doing a great job
sequestering carbon on your land,
you're actually kind of pushing on those impacts
to someone else.
And so, they certainly tried to track this
with carbon projects, but I would argue
that there's a lot more to be done on that
given just how often we have carbon projects
happening in places where they're certainly
not producing their fair share of the wood they consume.
And so the final piece given we wanna make sure
that the carbon that's being stored
on that land base is permanent,
or at least permanent in the eyes of our lifespans.
Typically with carbon offset projects,
it's usually anywhere from a 40 to a 100-year agreement.
And what they're looking for often
is some sort of instrument,
whether it's a conservation easement
or some other mechanism
that actually confirms that that land will not,
in five years convert to a shopping mall
or an agricultural field or a solar array
that would basically take all of that carbon benefit
and convert it to something else.
And so, making sure that not only are you gaining carbon,
not only are you minimizing kind of the leakage,
but you're also kind of permanently,
or at least like I said,
in the eyes of kind of our lifespans
and kind of these agreements,
maintain that carbon for a certain time period.
Again, this webinar's not on carbon markets,
but there are some that have much shorter timeframes,
but the kind of the...
When we're looking at some of the compliance markets
and regulatory markets,
these are what we're dealing with.
The first chance to test me
and maybe push me to never use this again, let's see.
If folks will go to menti.com,
and I'll pull up my screen in a second.
So if you just go online to menti.com
and then enter in the code 2217 7744,
and I'll leave it up on the screen for a moment.
And maybe, Mark,
if you wouldn't mind just typing
the code in the chat too.
When I share my screen,
this code will be on there again,
but if folks can go to menti.com either on your phone
or on the computer, you're watching me on,
and then I'll pull up the screen here.
And what we're gonna talk about now
are just kind of different attributes of forests
and how those are impacted by...
All right, somebody was able to get on, awesome.
Two people were able to get on.
Mark, and Abby and Mark.
So, one of the key questions
when we get into thinking about carbon
and how forests should be managed
and how we should think about the best ways
to manage ecosystems,
there's often a lot of discussion around
what is the best forest condition
when it comes to Sequestration.
And so we have some early returns on this question,
those have been able to make their way in.
And I always try to hide the answers with my classes.
I think once they're up there,
folks just pile on one option.
But I think I just have a very enlightened group here today.
So those of you that are tallying on here,
looks like the majority so far are going middle-aged
and now we're getting a little bit of spread on this.
Give people another minute or so to put in their votes.
Looks like I have 14 folks,
so give the last couple of folks a second
to put in a vote if they want.
All right, so those of you that answered...
The 13th, if you just waited.
All right, so there's a 14th got it right.
So those that answered middle-aged,
poles and sawtimber, are correct.
In that, really this often tends to be,
as that forest is entering into, and again,
speaking from kind of our Northern hardwood ecosystems
here in the Northeast,
anywhere from 30 to 60 years of age
just tends to be where we see that kind of peak rate
of sequestration in terms of growth.
And so, that's a critical fact,
because it really does influence how folks
think about the types of forests
we should be managing for,
and kind of how we work across the landscape with them.
And part of that issue really revolves back around,
and thank you for humoring me with menti.
We'll have another chance to break that later.
Really deals around with how people sometimes
use the term storage and sequestration interchangeably.
And it really creates a bit of confusion
as to what forest condition is best for what.
And so this diagram is kind of a way
that we try to summarize that in this pamphlet
where we have, in brown here,
the darker the color, as this forest ages,
the more carbon storage there is.
And so as forest age, trees are getting bigger,
they're accumulating dead trees,
they're accumulating litter and so forth.
It's a world-proven fact that as forest get older,
the amount of carbon stored in them gets higher, right?
And so, as your forest is getting older,
your sugarbush is getting older,
the trees are getting bigger,
and we'll talk more about this,
the storage goes up.
The challenge though is that,
if we view this as kind of the only way that carbon
is being stored and sequestered from the landscape,
it leads to kind of these arguments
that all we need is a lot of old forest in our landscape.
The problem is that when we look at sequestration,
that rate of carbon being pulled out of the atmosphere,
this dark green area, kind of that pole timber
and a small sawtimber,
this tends to be the period of stand's life,
where it actually sequestering at the highest rate.
Early in a forest's life,
even though these trees are growing really fast,
there's a lot of soil carbon being lost
as that forest recovers from disturbance.
And so, the net balance is not that great.
But as that forest closes in and keeps growing and growing,
we see, and this is kind of that sigmoid growth curve,
this tends to be that peak rate.
And there's that,
we're taught by this stuff in forestry school.
I know a couple of maple folks that have those degrees,
this is kind of where we see peak PAI,
in those processes.
So when we're talking about balancing
storage and sequestration,
old forests are awesome for storage,
kind of middle-aged forests are great for sequestration.
All forest, even old forest are still sequestering carbon,
they're just not doing it as fast as young forest.
And so there's often a bit of a conflation
of those two terms.
And depending on what camp you're in,
whether you're a young forest person
or an old forest person
can cause for some debate
around which is better for carbon
and really both are needed.
And we'll certainly talk about that a bit more.
You'll also notice certainly the composition
of the forest is changing.
And so as we get into the developmental stage
that many sugarbushes often are in,
even older depending on what state you're from,
we're certainly much more into large sawtimber
and storage is much more the focus.
Those trees aren't growing at a very rapid rate,
but they certainly have a lot of mass to them.
Something we'll talk about in a second.
But what I'm gonna get into is just talking through,
and again, my full discretion,
I'm a forester, silviculturist,
that's kind of how I view the woods.
And so, sugarbushes and their management,
I view very strongly through that lens.
And so that's a major caveat,
that I'm a fan of cutting trees for objectives
and diversity and structure and so forth,
and thinking through how that fits into kind of both goals
around tree health and composition.
And so what I'm gonna do is just talk a bit about,
if we're sugaring and have a sugarbush,
are there ways for us to kind of enhance carbon in those,
and certainly some of you may have already been,
involved with or aware of,
that there are no sugarbush anchorages
that are part of large carbon projects right now
that are being paid for carbon
and kind of how that works out,
and some things to be aware of,
both in terms of trade-offs with that.
So the first, most important thing you could ever do
when it comes to management
and managing for carbon is to keep a forest a forest.
And I can end the webinar at this point.
Really the biggest impact that anyone could have
on the amount of carbon stored in the forest
is to turn it into something else.
And that something else could be a field,
it could be a home lot,
it could be anything.
But going from a non-forest to...
Going from a forest to a non-forest condition
is a huge impact on the net storage and sequestration
that happens in any given landscape.
And again, just to pick on Vermont a bit,
the last census of the forest land,
we're losing 2000 acres of forest per year in the state.
And so, I boasted about 40 to 60% of our fossil fuel
emissions are being offset.
Well, that relies on those forests still being there
to do that.
And so as that number goes down, certainly an issue.
And so part of that permanence aspect of carbon,
even if you're not gonna get into carbon market,
as we all appreciate, everybody on this webinar I hope,
the value is having standing trees and mature trees
for sugaring and so forth.
Keeping those trees in that state
is the most important thing we can do for carbon.
But going beyond that,
kind of how do I go beyond making sure
I keep the carbon in there,
there are a couple of different pathways one can take
as it relates to carbon benefits from the forest.
And so, one aspect of sugarbushes, not all of them,
but certainly many,
that already is very consistent with carbon,
is that these tend to be mature forests.
There often isn't a plan to do much for heavy harvesting
and certainly do much for conversion to non-forest use.
And so there are aspects of just how sugarbushes
currently exist in their current state
that really would suggest
that we don't need to do anything for carbon benefit.
They're already a great place for carbon.
And I would argue that that's partially true.
The nature of sugarbush management, the nature of,
again, how many of these are structured
and their composition, and the size of the trees
and so forth that are maintained,
there's certainly multiple benefits.
And from a carbon market perspective,
sugarbush could get payment
basically if they have historically done some harvesting
or even if they haven't depending on the program you're in,
by agreeing that we will not harvest any more trees,
we'll keep a high density of trees in that landscape,
we'll maximize carbon storage,
so it is kind of maximized,
like the living trees that are out there,
just continue sequestration, not at a high rate,
but certainly those trees are fixing carbon.
So that's certainly one way to do it.
Basically no management, other than guaranteeing
that you're gonna keep that in a forested state.
The key thing to recognize, and this is where
there are challenges with carbon
is that that's a single objective.
And so, if we're gonna maximize that objective
by not doing any management,
there are some key trade-offs
that really can be an issue.
And the first is, that as many of you rightfully answered
in that pop quiz, these old stands as they age,
particularly if it's an even-aged stand
really are gonna peak out in sequestration and again,
be sequestering at a lower and lower rate over time.
And so the strength of the carbon sink for that forest,
and even for that region will begin to go down
if you don't have some young forest
or even multi-age forest.
So forest with kind of a mix of old and young in them.
The bigger issue is that we think of permanence
in the term of carbon markets,
as it relates to you not converting that land
to something else.
But there's another aspect of permanence in that
are those trees built to last,
both in terms of their individual structure?
Do they have good life crowns on them,
good branch architecture, high vigor?
Are they surrounded by all the same species?
And so if we have a defoliater
or some other insects and disease or disturbance,
do we have kind of high vulnerability,
low resilience to those so that that carbon
can really be impacted?
And so that high-stocking, high-carbon condition
oftentimes is a major trade-off with our ability
to have both vigorous trees,
as well as often higher resilience with more diverse species
out there in the landscape.
From a habitat standpoint,
again as these trees mature,
certainly, there are species
that need large sawtimber size classes,
but many of those species also need kind of cover
for fledglings and other things.
And so, there's certainly narrow habitat value for wildlife.
And then importantly
as I mentioned with the leakage,
let's just say, for example,
a whole county or a whole state even says,
we're just not gonna cut wood anymore on public land,
and we're gonna hold onto it in the name of carbon,
unless we that day say
we are also never gonna consume wood again,
we are basically kind of shifting our carbon impacts
to other parts of the globe.
And part of that, we're gonna be shipping
those forest products from those areas to us,
which is gonna have a high CO2,
high greenhouse gas emission price tag on it.
And we're also shifting
some of those environmental justice and equity issues
to areas of the globe
that may not have the regulations we have,
or just, unfortunately,
you're not able to capitalize on markets like us.
So there's more than just maximizing carbon
in your backyard, not thinking about those global impacts.
So you can see where I'm probably going with this,
that there's another pathway
that still can benefit sugarbushes and more broadly for us
where you're doing active forest management.
Certainly your main objective maybe sugaring,
but you're certainly doing silviculture
to both enhance production in that sugarbush,
but also think through habitat values,
and doing it in a way that really is factoring in
like how does carbon work,
and carbon in the forest operate?
And so, what I'm really talking about
is doing kind of carbon-informed silviculture.
And essentially what that's doing is,
to the best of your ability,
both trying to minimize the impact of your management
on carbon storage.
So, even though you're cutting trees
and bringing equipment out there in the site,
you're trying your best to do that
in a way that kind of maintains those carbon stores,
or if it depletes those carbon stores,
doing it in a way that over time will kind of recover
and in many cases provide greater benefit
than no management at all.
And so the three pools that we often think about
being impacted by any harvesting out in the woods,
of course, the live aboveground, here's a bunch of it
being pulled by this grapple skidder.
It's not gonna be in that forest anymore.
It's being pulled off that forest
and hopefully stored in a nice veneer in your home.
But our impact on those, the aboveground pools
really depends on how much we cut, right?
So we have a pretty clear lever on that one.
A litter, so kind of soil leaf litter,
the leaf litter on top of the soil.
Generally, depending on how extreme that harvest is,
people tend to estimate particularly
where there's skid trails and a lot of activity.
There's a 20 to 36% reduction in those pools.
Thankfully leaves fall every year in these systems,
and so it often takes a decade or two to rebuild that,
but it's something that does recover.
But the key thing to really keep in mind,
and this is really something to factor in,
even if you aren't interested
in active forest management for carbon.
If you are accessing your sites
your sugarbush with equipment and are out there
at different times a year,
we really don't wanna compromise
the wonderful carbon that's below our feet
that is really hard to bring back if we impact it.
And so, a lot of the best management practices we have,
so in Vermont, call 'em acceptable management practices,
AMPs, but most of us are familiar
with these being referred to as best management practices.
Many of them really are designed
to minimize some soil erosion,
minimize impacts on soils,
make sure that equipment is operating in a way
that is not displacing soil and getting
into that mineral soil layer
in a way that isn't recoverable.
And so if your goal is to kind of minimize impact
on soil carbon,
making sure that you're following
the best management practices in your region
both in terms of times a year
to have equipment in the woods
and minimizing the impact of that equipment on the soil
is one great way to make sure that carbon pool
is effectively being maintained.
So the key thing, and again, the reason why
depending on the nature of your sugarbush,
carbon has a nice consistency with attributes
of some of our sugarbushes,
is that when it comes to above ground carbon,
so how much is stored in trees,
big trees have a huge impact on how much
is out in that forest.
So they carry the most weight literally, right?
And so there's been a bunch of work,
both in hardwood forest in the Northeast,
tropical forest in south America,
boreal forest systems.
And all of those ecosystems have a common trait.
And that is when we look at which trees
and which size trees store the most carbon,
the majority of the carbon in that forest
in terms of aboveground biomass is actually
in the top 1% of the stems and the stand
in terms of diameter.
So if we look at the sugarbush here,
this one stem basically in a few other large stems
have up to 50% of all of the aboveground biomass
in that forest.
Likewise, my students aren't just giving me the thumbs up
'cause they know how much I love gnarly old, yellow birch,
they're also excited about the carbon in this tree.
If you think about just how much mass
is in one of these large trees,
it's really an important part of that storage
that's out there.
And so when we think about managing sugarbushes
and managing forest in general
maintaining and actually accelerating
that large tree component can be a really good thing
in terms of just kind of maximizing
what we have out there for carbon storage
and also reallocating resources to trees
that likely might be better producers
in terms of sugaring
as well as just kind of higher vigor individuals.
And so if my goal is to manage for large tree carbon
in the context of more traditional forestry applications,
where as opposed to sugaring,
we might actually wanna remove trees
based on some criteria related to,
have they maybe reached the threshold
as it relates to different grade increases
for saw logs and so forth.
So in those contexts,
and so for those of you that do intersect with those worlds,
we're often thinking of at least extending cutting cycles
or tree level rotations, one to two inches in diameter
or 15 to 20 years,
depending on your site productivity.
And so keeping those trees out there
up to two decades longer than you normally would.
And so in sugaring,
obviously that's often less of a concern,
but nevertheless, trying to maintain
those large trees out there
and maintaining them with high vigor.
And so that's where the second piece comes in,
in that we know from long history of civil culture research
and just understanding how trees grow
that if we wanna grow big trees fast
and maintain high vigor and maintain trees
that also have high potential for sap yield,
and one of the best ways to do that
is through crop-tree release.
And so instead of keeping this high density stand,
that could be kind of qualifying
for passive carbon management,
we're going out there and deliberately releasing
some of our better crop trees
or better form maple with various levels of release.
There's different schools of thought on this,
but at least in the forestry context,
we're often asking in a mature stand
for at least two, sometimes three sides being released
and even a full release, depending on the context.
But by using that as a way to really accelerate
that large tree structure out there on the landscape
and get that biomass being fixed.
Likewise, if you are harvesting areas
and so it may not be within the sugarbush,
or even could be in areas that are being turned over,
when you're doing those harvests
and you're still leaving behind large trees,
what we call legacy trees,
just to retain some of that biomass,
it takes so long to accumulate in those stands.
So if we wanna balance kind of this idea
of lots of big trees that store a lot of carbon,
but at the same time,
we want forests that have vigorous trees
that are sequestering and kind of going through
that clock that I showed from poles to small sawtimber,
doing some combination of both.
And again, this is where my bias
as a silviculturist and forester comes through
in that when we're managing sugarbushes
and thinking about production,
it's not just about kind of maximizing production
on the current trees,
but also finding ways both to enhance habitat values,
so kind of diversifying the structure out there,
but also recruiting and regenerating kind of future cohorts
of maple and other species.
And so one technique someone might use
to try to balance both accelerating
that large tree component while at the same time,
increasing resilience and increasing diversity,
as well as sequestration rates would be
to do some combination of crop-tree release.
So 30 to 70 trees per acre.
This would be kind of a medium sawtimber stand.
And then in between those,
creating gaps that actually are being used
to recruit new cohorts of maple, other species.
And so really thinking about
kind of the overall long-term dynamics of that stand,
even though those areas you're regenerating,
obviously can't be tapped for some time.
And so, how much should I actually be thinking about
in terms of stand stocking?
As we know, that the highest stocking,
if you pack 'em in, right?
This picture here on the left,
that is wall to wall carbon.
If I just look at the world through the lens of carbon,
this is ideal, right?
Just wall to wall aboveground carbon.
And so this is high stocking, but as we all know,
that situation on the left there,
if you can picture what the tree crowns look like,
both their size, kind of the tree level vigor,
as well as the individual tree level sap yield,
that high density is not an ideal scenario.
On the flip side, we know if we want big,
large, healthy crowns,
we could grow trees by themselves outside,
out in the field, but we're dealing with forest.
And so what we're often doing is trying to build
in this kind of compromise
between really high density conditions
that might maximize how many trees I can put a tap into,
but at the tree level,
those trees are not doing very well.
As well as kind of maximize the tree level, that vigor,
and find some compromise that might actually work
in terms of stand level carbon storage,
number of tappable trees, and importantly,
long-term vigor regeneration opportunities.
And so when we look at how this translates
into kind of our stocking guides
and thinking through management recommendations,
really in terms of the balance between these two extremes,
it really corresponds to anywhere
from 60 to 90 square feet per acre of basal area,
which really is between the B line,
partway up to the A line on a stocking guide.
So what we're looking at
and many of you are familiar with this,
some who graduated from UVM Forestry,
I think you have to get this tattooed on your forearm,
very key guidance for the rest of your life
in this region, is a stocking guide
Bill Leak put together for Northern hardwoods
that again is just showing kind of these different zones
of potential stocking for hardwood forest
that again is often translated into sugarbush management
in terms of what we're doing out there.
And so we have these zones that,
above the A line overstocked.
And so the tree and stand level growth is suboptimal,
even though, again,
you're packing that for us with trees.
And if it's all maple, you're packing it with maple.
If they're the right diameter,
that could have a tap in them,
but obviously there's some compromises there
in terms of long-term stability of those trees
and of that carbon.
Where we're often shooting for
is kind of between that A and B line.
So well-stocked or fully stocked stand
where we're kind of compromising
between maximum tree level growth
and kind of overstock conditions.
So trying to keep that site fully occupied and growing.
And then these understock conditions
that might have really good tree growth,
but you're not fully utilizing the site.
What I'm gonna do here is I'm gonna take data
from seven sugarbushes that we've been working with
as part of a project evaluating bird-friendly maple
properties and some other sugarbushes in Vermont,
and just show you how those plot on this,
both in terms of their stocking,
as well as in terms of their carbon.
And so what I have here,
each dot is a different sugarbush.
And then I have this kind of as a call-out,
the amount of metric tons of carbon per acre
that each of those sugarbushes have.
And so you can see as you would expect,
as you go from lower stocking to higher stocking,
the amount of carbon goes up.
But as I mentioned, these higher stocking stands
are starting to approach a condition
that certainly is gonna be undesirable
in terms of tree level of vigor,
even though like, if I were to pay for carbon today,
that ownership is actually gonna get
the most amount of payment.
One of these dots is actually
a very well-managed maple research center,
but I won't point it out,
but it's just wonderful how well the data
reflects that place.
And so what we're often talking about
in terms of the management is we're trying to keep things
in this area here.
And what I think is worth pointing out
is that if you wanna get
into the California Air Resources Board
compliance carbon markets, so the cap and trade markets,
this is actually the baseline they use
for New England for hardwood forest.
And so essentially if your forest is already there,
you're gonna get paid actually for kind of that carbon,
that stored carbon, storage and sequestration.
If not, then kind of your future management
needs to be kind of above and maintained
above that baseline.
So I'm just pointing to some of the compromises that exist
if we're kind of pushing for kind of high carbon conditions,
depending on the criteria used for evaluating that.
Last chance to deal with this nefarious menti.com.
So if folks wanna go back to that,
and I'm gonna, it's the same code
and I'm just gonna advance
so we can go to the next question.
So we have three tree species here,
one of which is Abby's favorite,
one of which is mine, at least in the hardwood group.
And so if we have, we know who the early answer was,
if we have three species;
yellow birch, red maple, paper birch,
and they're the exact same size,
like they are the exact same diameter,
exact same volume,
which of those three species
is gonna have more carbon in it?
Which of those species is gonna win?
A little bit more competitive quiz today around this one.
Oh, Abby's bias is being felt across the group.
I'll give folks another 30 seconds to lob
a educated guess at this one.
All right, so as that last possible answer is coming in,
I will point out that the majority
is not right in this case.
And what we're looking at here are three species,
two of which have pretty similar wood densities;
yellow birch and paper birch.
With yellow birch of course being a notch superior.
And then red maple, as we all commonly refer to
as soft maple or soft maple group,
is a little bit less dense wood.
And so, if they're the exact same size,
it really comes down to what's the density of that wood.
'Cause that's really gonna translate
into how much does that tree weigh,
So yellow birch, and this is the winner in this contest
as well as in many others.
Sorry, Abby.
So we will go back to the presentation here.
And so if I'm managing my sugarbush,
and I'm trying to manage different species
as it relates to carbon,
of course, sugar maple is awesome,
because it's awesome for syrup production, no better tree,
but there are aspects of it that make it awesome
from a carbon perspective.
It's very dense wood, has a higher wood density
than yellow birch.
It's long lived, so not only is it dense wood,
but it lives for a long time and it gets big.
And so all of those attributes really bode well,
whereas the species like beach,
it's got dense wood but it's not gonna get
to be a big tree in your forest.
Just give em beach park disease impacts
unless some of the folks that are there logging
are from outside of the range of beach park disease
at this point.
And so when we think of trying to favor
that non-maple component,
so if we're trying to have that land certified
and you kind of meet organic criteria,
so we're looking for how do we build
in that non-maple component.
Part of that we can count red maple
and I'll give red maple an accolade in a second,
but we're trying to find the other tree species
that have high wood density.
And so things like yellow birch work really well,
red oak, red maple,
basswood does not have as high wood density,
but this list of species doesn't just correspond
to wood density.
It also corresponds to what might be built to last
for the future.
And so basswood as a species
actually is quite adapted to warm and dry temperatures.
Even though we associate it with our mesic forest,
it's quite suited for some of the climate regimes
and temperature regimes of the future.
Those that are familiar with basswood
going all the way to the prairie margin
in the Eastern U.S.
And then red maple, tremendously plastic species,
and really well adaptable as well.
So what species are out there to last
and also might provide some resilience over time.
And so sugar maple, great choice,
but thinking also about other trees that are gonna grow
for a long time and get quite large.
Besides the living, there's a lot of opportunity
for improvement when it comes to deadwood carbon.
And so again, oftentimes this is actually less of an issue
depending on how the sugarbush is being managed
and that there's retention of cavity trees
if they're still able to produce yield
and certainly still alive.
But what we tend to see over time is that,
snags falling on lines,
dead wood creating obstacles in the ground,
that historic management has really led to us
removing a lot of the dead wood from our forests.
And so this figure on the left is just looking
at standing dead wood basal area.
And on the left, this is kind of the range
that's typically found an old growth forest.
And this is what's found in second growth.
So unmanaged forest.
So what you're seeing a lot of these trees
are dying from self thinnings.
So they're pretty small snags, but nevertheless,
there are a lot of them.
And then this area here are actually stands
that are managed for timber production
using single tree selection.
So those that have done marking
for single tree selection before,
and even thinking about future trees for tapping,
often we're taking out the low vigor,
poor quality cavity trees first, right?
What we call the UGS, or unacceptable growing stock.
And so we often eliminate the opportunity
for those kinds of often large dead wood stores
(indistinct).
And so what we're looking for in terms of trying
to increase this is that retaining anywhere,
two per acre above of trees that have cavities
that are standing dead trees,
obviously those do pose risks to lines and so forth.
And so trying to balance that.
And likewise, down dead wood in the ground,
those that maybe have historically collected
that for firewood and other uses,
or just kind of got it out of the way,
because it was kind of a nuisance,
trying to actually work with that.
So there's a question about ash.
And I think that the real issue with that one
is ash is fantastic, grows to huge sizes.
The challenge is that,
how is that carbon built to last
with emerald ash bore, kind of very concerning
about kind of the future opportunity of that species
to be kind of big tree carbon stocks out in the forest.
And so that's the main reason it didn't make my list,
but it would be a great species as well,
based on that question in the chat.
So the last piece I'll mention about active management
is that if the goal is to have long-term option options
for forest carbon storage in the woods,
there are two key bottlenecks that we need to address
in some sugarbushes and more broadly in many forests,
and that if you have kind of wall to wall barberry
or garlic mustard, or buckthorn,
beneath like really great aboveground carbon storage,
you essentially don't have a very stable carbon base
in terms of the potential for replacement
of that aboveground carbon in those trees
with future regeneration.
And so there are some programs being developed right now
on the family forest carbon program,
that one of the practices
they're thinking of incentivizing landowners to do
is controlling invasives and giving them payment
for the carbon gains from that.
So there's really many that are recognizing
the impact of invasives on forest carbon.
Likewise, this beautiful maple stand in Shelburne, Vermont,
you can see has tremendous regeneration potential,
but you can also tell how high the snow gets.
Basically any seedling that gets above that
is getting mowed down to this level.
And so even though there's a lot of seedlings,
the ability for those trees to grow and develop
into saplings and future aboveground storage
is being diminished by deer.
And so controlling that is also critical
as we think through kind of trying to maintain
those stocks on the ground.
So the last point I'll make is that,
when we cut wood from the forest,
it does reduce carbon stocks,
but that's kind of a stand level look at things.
If you zoom out to a broader level, like a region,
and again, my bias being the region I work in,
that temporary reduction in carbon
really is critical to putting a context of,
what is that region doing
in terms of carbon sequestration and storage.
And so all I have here is normalized
to basically make everything be relative
to how much wood is being removed on a cubic foot basis
on the six New England states.
And so, on average in New England,
for every cubic foot of wood removed
are growing at 1.8 cubic feet.
And so essentially, even though carbon storage
is being reduced in some areas
we're actually gaining more carbon than we're losing.
And so, at a regional scale,
depending on what state we're in.
even though somebody might say that person
on that loader is taking carbon off of that site,
yes they are, but collectively,
the impact of our management is quite minimal.
And then actually we are kind of a net carbon store
and sequester as a region,
largely 'cause we don't harvest as much
relative to other areas.
And so, we're not kind of impacting it as much.
So I mentioned passive and active
as kind of two separate categories,
but within your property, and even within a landscape,
we need both.
Really there is a need to both set aside areas
and not manage them or maintain areas
that have been set aside and allow those
to continue to accumulate and be areas of carbon storage.
But we also need areas where active carbon management
is occurring to create those multiple age classes
and those resilience conditions
that actually can withstand future stressors
and keep carbon in the woods
and kind of out of the atmosphere.
Likewise, within a property,
it can be your entire property that you decide not to cut
or to do active carbon management,
or it can be subsets within the sugarbush.
I might not do any harvesting or I might do some harvesting
that enhances carbon, and other areas I don't.
But the key is that, this can occur
both at multiple scales.
And the main goal is that
we are not just kind of putting all of our eggs
in like max carbon storage across the landscape
without any management.
We need that mosaic of conditions, both for biodiversity,
like many species that rely on conditions
other than young forest,
other than old forest, we need both.
And certainly for resilience standpoint.
Key take-homes, and then I'll switch to the question
that somebody has in the chat.
If nothing else, keep it forest.
There is nothing better again on land
for carbon than forest.
And so it's a fantastic time to be in the tree business
because it's finally being valued
beyond the many amazing things
they've already been doing for society.
Folks are now seeing just how important
they are for carbon.
And so it's really in our hands and many landowners' hands
to make sure that benefit remains.
And in some cases, hopefully you're getting payment
for that benefit.
And so when we're thinking about managing sugarbushes,
protecting that soil carbon pools,
so using best management practices,
when you're accessing that site,
trying to minimize disturbance to soil.
And likewise, when you're harvesting
using kind of approaches that are carbon informed.
And the key thing about carbon
that's a bit bewildering to those of us
that are students of the history of forestry
and other natural resource management,
is that we're seeing in some circles,
both with environmental groups,
as well as with some programs
that it's really pushing landowners
and pushing regions to try to maximize carbon.
This is kind of the objective above all others.
And we know from so many times over
that anytime we try to maximize one single objective,
there's gonna be tremendous trade offs with others.
And in the context of carbon,
those trade-offs are gonna be
both bio-diversity benefits,
certainly benefits related to resilience and critically,
there's gonna be some social trade-offs
and environmental injustice trade-offs
where we're basically still using wood,
but not using it in our backyard.
And so what are those impacts both in terms
of how much carbon it takes to get wood products to us,
'cause we're no longer producing them locally,
but also what are those impacts in terms
of the local communities that we are now
pushing those demands to.
And so, really critical to get excited about carbon,
but recognize it as one of many objectives
in this multi-dimensional awesome ecosystem
that we get to work with.
I'll stop there,
and I can take a look at the chat.
There's a question about,
and I can turn my presentation off
so you can see me squirm.
So the question about what gaps would I recommend
for even in sugarwoods
to the recommended uneven aged condition?
Yeah, I think the real challenge with the browse issue
as it relates to the creating regeneration openings
in areas where they aren't is that,
if we have small openings,
those can quickly be like honed in on by deer.
And so regeneration is often often gonna be impacted
pretty heavily in those areas.
And so when we're thinking about creating gaps
and in terms of gap sizes,
in rich stands,
I'm really talking about quarter-acre openings and less,
and often thinking about kind of that size class,
at least providing some recruitment opportunity
for yellow birch.
Obviously maple, if it's a rich stand is gonna do well.
And so to your point,
it is gonna kind of erode some of that non-maple component.
And so if that really is,
if you're working with a site that has
a low non-maple component to begin with,
then pushing that gap size up a bit
by a two-third acre,
or even a half acre with some retention in it
would be one way to make sure
you're getting that mix of species,
even though I recognize that
that is gonna reduce taps per acre.
When we think about overall ecosystem health
and kind of what we're trying to do
with some stipulation of 25% non-sugar maple species,
the goal there is that,
we know that this is a forested condition
that was never 100% maple naturally.
So in terms of whether it's native insects and diseases
or wildlife species,
they're involved for trying to deal with,
maintain that diversity out there in a sugarbush.
It's a total trade-off with maximum taps,
but that stipulation is there for a reason,
for the other benefits that it's gonna provide
besides maximizing that one objective.
The real issue that I'm thinking of though,
if it's an area with a high deer density,
the challenge like I said,
of all of a sudden creating gaps in areas
where there's not many,
you can have kind of the deer just hone in
on those spots and have big impact.
And so whether there's ability to leave tops
and just create a bit of a mess out there
and leave some of that,
the top wood and the carbon in those areas,
particularly given you're not gonna be
necessarily running lines right to that spot
for quite some time,
but doing things to try to minimize impact in those areas.
So, basically an argument for moving saplings
from one location to another new sugarbush,
so yeah, I think planting larger stock
if you really are dealing with regeneration issues
and herbivore issues.
Yeah, I mean, if you can get bigger material into those,
obviously there's a cost, can be a cost.
You can certainly do some of it on your own,
but there's a labor cost, I guess to that.
That was gonna be an issue too.
Are there questions folks have?
- [Mark] Hey, Tony, thanks very much.
That was terrific.
I just allowed people to unmute their mics
if people wanna ask a question.
- Yeah, and there's a hand raise function if you want to,
that I think might...
Yeah, I can keep...
If folks wanna do it that way.
However, they wanna do it.
- [Mark] Guess, while people are thinking of questions,
I'll ask a question, and it kind of relates to also a plug.
The last session in our webinar series
is about forest land tax programs.
And I'm curious if you think the programs
that you're familiar with,
I'm assuming you're familiar with Vermont's UVA program,
but maybe others around Northeast,
do you think they allow for some of the issues
that you talked about, managing for carbon as well
as more traditional forest products?
Do you think there's enough of an incentive to do that,
or do you think there needs to be an updating
to how those programs are run?
- Well, given this is recorded,
I'm not sure I'll add.
So yeah, I think the challenge with our forest tax laws
and some of those programs is that,
they're often focused on that landowner
have a management plan.
All of you're familiar with that
where they're doing some periodic timber harvesting.
And so I think one of the bigger challenges
is that many landowners aren't excited
about the timber harvest part.
And so, it's attracting maybe a subset of landowners
that maybe might be excited about that,
or it might be more consistent with their goals
or folks who are enrolling in it.
And then they're having to do harvest,
but it might not be totally consistent with
what they're excited about or they somehow get away
with not harvesting for a while
and are in some cases abusing the program,
what is intended to do.
And so there's certainly some discussion
about those programs evolving to include areas
that are set aside just to become old forest.
So provide both that carbon benefit,
as well as that habitat benefit that's lacking,
kinda that really old forest condition.
But the biggest issue with carbon,
if you wanna incentivize it
and even get landowners to get credit for that
is it often needs to be verifiable.
And so those of you that are familiar with carbon markets
and carbon projects,
the biggest expense is actually enrolling
because you need to prove how much carbon
you have out there.
And then over time, prove that you're accumulating
that carbon and are doing things consistent
with what you laid out in the agreement for carbon payment.
And so with current use and other programs,
I know about the state of Massachusetts
has been exploring this,
the burden would really fall onto county foresters
or service foresters to have to really be evaluating,
this person is getting payment or getting a tax break
because they're enrolled in this program
and they're enrolled in maybe this carbon category.
And like, we need to go to that property and make sure
they aren't actually doing things
that are counter to that objective.
And so it still adds a layer of complexity
in terms of being able to actually enforce
for lack of a better term that folks
are following through on that action.
And so, there was definitely some concern about like how,
there's definitely a lot of interest in it
and there's movement in the use value appraisal program
in Vermont to include proportion of ownership
and kind of an old forest designation
that will allow folks to have portions
that are gonna be just kind of set aside passively.
But currently, there's only a few states moving that way.
The one thing that is happening
is this family forest carbon program,
which is money coming from Amazon
for the state of Pennsylvania, the state of Vermont.
It's being piloted as a program to pay family forest owners
for carbon friendly projects.
And there's six practices that kind of fall
under that umbrella.
One of which includes minimizing deer impacts,
one that includes primarily just doing low thinning
of the forest,
but maintaining a pretty high stocking level,
one that includes removing invasive species,
and a few other approaches
that would give land owners payment for carbon storage
and kind of over a fairly,
I think it's a couple of decade time periods.
So that might be another option
that comes on board, Mark, to help keep forest forest
and offset those taxes.
There could be a carbon tax too,
but that's a different discussion.
So the question comes up about,
if you're chipping the tops
in down material versus leaving it
to decay naturally,
the natural decay is gonna be a lot slower,
just given kind of how,
as that tree's decaying,
first off, that top is not gonna be kind of,
there's gonna be parts of it
that are indirect contact with the ground.
And so decomposition might be slower in those areas
that are elevated off of the soil.
We're chipping, and you're kind of exposing
that carbon, that wood to decomposition
from many, many sides.
And so that would cause it to be broken down a bit faster,
but both would keep more carbon in the woods
than if you took that off the forest.
But leaving it to decay naturally
would definitely be a slower pathway.
And there are several species,
I know people don't get excited about fungi all the time,
but there are several species of fungi
that are pretty specific
to like smaller diameter class twigs.
And so, from a biodiversity standpoint,
that would provide a bit more habitat
for some of those native fungi
that are associated with that.
Good question.
- [Mark] Great, well, it's a little after eight o'clock,
so I think we're gonna wanna wrap up.
Just wanna thank Tony for a great presentation,
great topic, timely topic.
And certainly it sounds like an evolving topic
that we'll be following for a long time to come.
Folks, if you had more questions
and you haven't got a chance to ask 'em tonight,
we do have an ask the team feature on our website,
www.maplemanager.org.
So you are welcome to follow up with questions
on the website and myself, Tony,
and some of our other project team members
will probably see them there.
So I wanna thank Tony for his time,
for his great presentation.
Thanks everyone for joining.
Feel free to sign off.