State-Level Forest and Forest Product Carbon Modeling

The MSU Forest Carbon and Climate Program (FCCP) worked collaboratively alongside American Forests, the Northern Institute of Applied Climate Science (NIACS), the Canadian Forest Service Carbon Accounting Team, and various state/federal partners within the natural resource sector to model the effects of forest management and conservation on future greenhouse gas emission. Together, we established a collaborative exercise along with our state partners in Pennsylvania, Maryland, Michigan, Minnesota, Wisconsin, Oregon, and Wisconsin that may be used to inform policy and management decision to best utilize current scientific research to mitigate climate change within the forestry sector.

The FCCP and our partners engaged with 7 US states to model various scenarios. In conjunction with our state partners, we developed a variety of target goals and management scenarios incorporating forest sector activities and climate simulations to explore the role forests and their associated harvest wood products have in mitigating greenhouse gas emissions.

Our long-term goal is to continually build capacity within state policy making to understand the role of forest management under climate change. Working directly with state decision-makers in natural resource management agencies, we expect these results to have immediate impact for forest management in these states.