title: High-biomass forests of the Pacific Northwest: who manages them and how much is protected?
abstract: To examine ownership and protection status of forests with high-biomass stores (>200 Mg/ha) in the Pacific Northwest (PNW) region of the United States, we used the latest versions of publicly available datasets. Overlay, aggregation, and GIS-based computation of forest area in broad biomass classes in the PNW showed that the National Forests contained the largest area of high-biomass forests (48.4 % of regional total), but the area of high-biomass forest on private lands was important as well (22.8 %). Between 2000 and 2008, the loss of high-biomass forests to fire on the National Forests was 7.6 % (236,000 ha), while the loss of high-biomass forest to logging on private lands (364,000 ha) exceeded the losses to fire across all ownerships. Many remaining high-biomass forest stands are vulnerable to future harvest as only 20 % are strictly protected from logging, while 26 % are not protected at all. The level of protection for high-biomass forests varies by state, for example, 31 % of all high-biomass federal forests in Washington are in high-protection status compared to only 9 % in Oregon. Across the conterminous US, high-biomass forest covers <3 % of all forest land and the PNW region holds 56.8 % of this area or 5.87 million ha. Forests with high-biomass stores are important to document and monitor as they are scarce, often threatened by harvest and development, and their disturbance including timber harvest results in net C losses to the atmosphere that can take a new generation of trees many decades or centuries to offset.
authors.affiliation: College of Forestry, Oregon State University, Corvallis, OR, 97331-5704, USA, olga.krankina@oregonstate.edu.
authors.forename: Olga N
authors.initials: ON
authors.lastname: Krankina
authors.forename: Dominick A
authors.initials: DA
authors.lastname: DellaSala
authors.forename: Jessica
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Leonard
authors.forename: Mikhail
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Yatskov
mesh_terms: D018533:Biomass; D003247:Conservation of Natural Resources / Q000379:methods*; D005390:Fires; D016468:Forestry / Q000331:legislation & jurisprudence; D040362:Geographic Information Systems; D009922:Oregon; D010067:Ownership / Q000145:classification; D014197:Trees / Q000145:classification / Q000254:growth & development*; D014861:Washington