Forests have enormous potential to provide natural climate solutions with manifold ecological, economic, and societal co-benefits. Yet the risks of forest carbon loss, including due to climate-induced disturbances such as pests, drought, and fire, are not often considered.
A rigorous, mechanistic, and probabilistic assessment of both the potential for and the risks facing forests as natural climate solutions is urgently needed for forest carbon offset markets in California and globally, bioenergy with carbon capture and sequestration estimates, and forest, timber, and conservation investment efforts. Cutting-edge vegetation and land surface models could theoretically provide this rigorous potential and risk assessment. Substantial progress has been made in quantifying and simulating forest carbon and climate-driven disturbances, yet this information is not currently synthesized or available for this wide range of stakeholders
We bring rigorous scientific approaches to tackle five central, interrelated questions: