Title: The Role of Strategic Planning in the Management of Fire-prone Western Oregon Forests for Maximizing Terrestrial Carbon Stocks over a100-year Horizon

Current frameworks for analyzing forest carbon offset projects in disturbance-prone western forests often fail to address the dynamic nature of carbon pathways through time. They do not account for the probability of loss due to wildfire, which can influence the prediction of carbon storage at the end of a planning horizon. In such an environment, optimal treatment regimes over time are dependent on the decisions that affect carbon storage during the analysis period. Silvicultural regimes that include both pyrogenic and biogenic emissions from forests, as well as the storage in wood products, were modeled to demonstrate a method to maximize carbon storage. Stand-level optimization is suggested as a method for demonstrating the development of treatment regimes to enable a full range of carbon storage benefits. These include a reduction in the risk of catastrophic wildfire, increased terrestrial carbon density, and the offset of treatment costs. This methodology may also provide a baseline for a full accounting of forestry carbon offset projects. A model was developed to determine optimal management regimes tha