Page 9 - Climate Change Impacts in the United States

7: FORESTS

Key Message 4: Influences on Management Choices

Forest management responses to climate change will be influenced by the changing
nature of private forestland ownership, globalization of forestry markets, emerging
markets for bioenergy, and U.S. climate change policy.

Climate change will affect trees and forests in urban areas, manage forests in the face of climate change will be affected
the wildland-urban interface, and in rural areas. It will also primarily by market and policy incentives, not climate change
challenge forest landowners managing forests for commercial itself.
products, energy development, environmental services such
as watershed protection, or the conversion of forestland to The ability of public, private, and tribal forest managers to adapt
developed and urban uses or agriculture. With increases in to future climate change will be enhanced by their capacity
urbanization, the value of forests in and around urban areas in to alter management regimes relatively rapidly in the face
providing environmental services required by urban residents of changing conditions. The response to climate change may
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will increase. Potentially the greatest shifts in goods and be greater on private forestlands where, in the past, owners
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environmental services produced from forests could occur have been highly responsive to market and policy signals.
in rural areas where social and economic factors will interact These landowners may be able to use existing or current
with the effects of climate change at landscape scales. forest management practices to reduce disturbance effects,
increase the capture and storage of carbon, and modify plant
Owner objectives, markets for forest products, crops and species distributions under climate change. In addition, policy
energy, the monetary value of private land, and policies incentives, such as carbon pricing or cap and trade markets,
governing private and public forestland all influence the could influence landowner choices. For human communities
actions taken to manage U.S. forestlands (56% privately dependent upon forest resources, maintaining or enhancing
owned, 44% public) (Figure 7.8). Ownership changes can bring their current resilience to change will influence their ability to
changes in forest objectives. Among corporate owners (18% respond to future stresses from climate change. 65
of all forestland), ownership has shifted from forest industry
to investment management organizations that may or may not On public, private, and tribal lands, management practices
have active forest management as a primary objective. Non- that can be used to reduce disturbance effects include
corporate private owners, an aging demographic, manage altering tree planting and harvest strategies through species
38% of forestland. Their primary objectives are maintaining selection and timing; factoring in genetic variation; managing
aesthetics and the privacy that the land provides as well as for reduced stand densities, which could reduce wildfire
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preserving the land as part of their family legacy. risk; reducing other stressors such as poor air quality; using
forest management practices to minimize drought stress;
A significant economic factor facing private forest owners is the and developing regional networks to mitigate impacts on
value of their forestlands for conversion to urban or developed ecosystem goods and services. 1,30,66 Legally binding regulatory
uses. Economic opportunities from forests include wood requirements may constrain adaptive management where
products, non-timber forest products, recreation activities, plants, animals, ecosystems, and people are responding to
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and in some cases, environmental services. 1,41 Less than climate change.
1% of the volume of commercial trees from U.S. forestlands
is harvested annually, and 92% of this harvest comes from Lack of fine-scale information about the possible effects of
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private forestlands. Markets for wood products in the United climate changes on locally managed forests limits the ability
States have been affected by increasingly competitive global of managers to weigh these risks to their forests against the
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markets, and timber prices are not projected to increase economic risks of implementing forest management practices
without substantial increases in wood energy consumption or such as adaptation and/or mitigation treatments. This
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other new timber demands. Urban conversions of forestland knowledge gap will impede the implementation of effective
over the next 50 years could result in the loss of 16 to 31 million management on public or private forestland in the face of
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acres. The willingness of private forest owners to actively climate change.

183 CLIMATE CHANGE IMPACTS IN THE UNITED STATES