Forest Management under the Uncertainties of Carbon Life Cycle

Forests play an important role in mitigating climate change. It can not only provide carbon sequestration in standing forests and long-life forest products, but can also reduce carbon release by bioenergy’s substitution of fossil fuel. Therefore, a comprehensive impact from forest carbon on landowners’ forest management decisions should be analyzed when considering those uncertainties in carbon life cycle. The first part of the dissertation is a meta-analysis review, in which important factors that can influence the estimation of harvesting rotations under carbon sequestration are summarized and analyzed. It concludes that some issues as natural disturbances and forest bioenergy deserve more attentions, which are addressed in the following two chapters. The second part adopts a revised Faustmann model to assess the relation between wildfire risk and prescribed fire under four assumed carbon policy scenarios. It arrives at the conclusion that penalty on carbon release in prescribed fire may reduce carbon sequestration in standing forests and make forest landowners to take the risk of loss in wildfire. Thus, a carbon policy with such a regulation should be adopted with caution. The third part investigates the probable influence brought by wood-based biofuel of stochastic prices with a Monte Carlo method. The results demonstrate that the assumption of double stochastic prices leads to earlier harvesting when comparing to constant price scenario or stochastic price assumption of only timber. The stochasticity of energy price may benefit landowners but also introduce uncertainties into their revenue. It also reduces sequestered carbon in standing forests and long-life forest products, which should be paid more attention when a general point of view on forest carbon is the concern. This project is informative for landowners who are facing new opportunities and challenges in forest management and is also helpful for carbon policy makers when dealing with forest carbon dilemmas of prescribed fire and bioenergy