In central Appalachia, forest land management programs to improve the carbon storage capacity of trees and soils are paying off, WVU research shows. They pay off for big companies that own land, but small landowners are left out. Biologist Steven Kannenberg is working to ensure local communities benefit from the carbon credits their forests generate.
(WVU Photo/Alyssa Reeves)

Researchers at West Virginia University are working to ensure that small landowners and local communities, rather than large corporations, benefit from the ability of Central Appalachian forests to remove the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide from the atmosphere.

SSo-called “forest-based climate solution programs” manage forest ecosystems in ways that improve carbon storage, such as by planting trees or limiting deforestation. To ensure these programs benefit both forests and local communities, a WVU team will spend the next four years studying how different management practices affect forest life in Appalachia – from the trees and other plants that grow there to the loggers, farmers, trail riders and ginseng gatherers who are also part of these ecosystems.

The project is supported with $1.7 million by the National Science Foundation.

“To curb climate change, we need to reduce fossil fuel emissions. But we can also use the ability of our forests to remove carbon dioxide from our atmosphere and store it in wood and soils for the long term,” said Steven KannenbergAssistant Professor for biology At the WVU Eberly College of Arts & Sciences“Forests in the eastern United States in particular are an incredibly large carbon sink. The amount of carbon dioxide they sequester is equivalent to 40 to 60 percent of the region’s fossil fuel emissions.”

There is money to be made from this carbon sequestration. In 2023, the Biden administration has invested $150 million in forest-based climate solutions programs aimed at small landowners. Billions of dollars in carbon credits are traded in financial markets every year.

Although about 70 percent of the forests in the eastern United States are privately or family-owned, little of the revenue flows into local communities. Instead, says Kannenberg, forest-based climate projects are “mostly carried out on corporate lands owned by companies outside the region.”

He believes that creating incentives for local landowners to allow carbon management programs on their properties is essential to combating climate change. Landowners who agree to implement such programs enter into contracts with companies that provide them with regular payments over a set number of years based on the area of ​​land they grow and the estimated amount of carbon stored.

The contracts have been difficult to sell to small landowners in Appalachia, in part because the revenue is significant only for large parcels. Owners typically must allow forestry on their properties, and the long contracts limit their ability to use the land for commercial purposes or as collateral for loans.

Kannenberg also pointed out that while forest management practices designed to improve soil health or biodiversity have several potentially lucrative “co-benefits” beyond carbon sequestration, neither landowners nor forest managers have the data they need to predict those revenues.

TThe team will ask about such issues in surveys it will send to thousands of small landowners across the region and will conduct interviews with loggers, sawmill operators, small tourism operators and other participants in the forestry industry in a former mining community in the Clearfork Valley on the Tennessee-Kentucky border.

TThe researchers will also address serious gaps in knowledge about how different management practices affect forests’ ability to sequester carbon by studying sites that have kept detailed records of deforestation for a century: Fernow Experimental Forest, WVU Research Forest, Summit Bechtel Reserve and Monongahela National Forest. Each forest contains mature, undisturbed areas as well as areas that have been logged using a variety of common practices.

BBy measuring factors such as tree height, leaf area, root system mass, soil nutrients and annual growth using tree rings, the team will quantify the impact of human intervention on the ecosystem over time.

Initial data have already shown how forestry in these areas has altered species distributions and weakened resilience to climate change. In Fernow, red oaks have become rarer after timber harvesting and have been replaced by trees that no longer have the oak’s ability to store large amounts of carbon and withstand drought conditions.

“Forests in the eastern U.S. are critical to meeting greenhouse gas emission goals,” Kannenberg said. “Forests in the east are more resilient to climate change than dry forests in the western U.S. because stressors such as rising temperatures, increasing drought, and increased pest and pathogen abundance are expected to be less severe.”

“That’s why projects exploring forest-based climate solutions are exploding in Central Appalachia. This region is becoming a model for how forest communities around the world can transition out of a fossil fuel-based economy.”

Decarbonization seed capital secured by the WVU Research Office made it possible to collect some initial data.

The WVU research team also includes Kathryn GazalAssociate Professor for Management of forest resources in the WVU Davis College of Agriculture and Natural Resourcesas well as Brenden McNeilProfessor of GeographyAnd Edward BrzostekAssociate Professor and Assistant Chair of Graduate Studies, both of Eberly College.

-WVU-

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