Quick facts:
- Blue Forest and Vibrant Planet scientists found that over a span of 25 years, ecological forest treatments (ex: prescribed burns, thinning) designed to reduce fuel loads and fire severity can lead to more stable carbon storage–to the tune of 35 metrics tons of CO2 equivalent per acre–compared to forests left untreated.
- Ecological treatments reduce wildfire severity by 78% within five years after treatment. Treatments enhance carbon storage resilience by promoting the survival and growth of fire-resilient large trees.
- The potential revenue earned from the resulting carbon credits is estimated at up to $6,100 per acre, when combined with revenue from complementary climate smart biomass markets like biochar which garners additional carbon funding. This revenue could fully offset treatment costs which typically range from $1000-5000/acre, depending on the location, underscoring the feasibility of carbon funding in supporting ecosystem resilience and climate mitigation efforts.
- In California, more than one million acres of forested land is exposed to high wildfire risk creating a $2 billion annual treatment cost that natural resource agencies and private contractors struggle to cover with limited grant and contract dollars. Carbon funding can play a critical role in addressing the state’s funding gap, with the potential to scale with the rapidly increasing need to mitigate wildfire risk across the western US and beyond.
The carbon storage paradox
Increasingly, wildfires are threatening our communities and ecosystems across the world. Our forests are unnaturally dense due to a century of fire suppression, and dangerously dry from a warming climate. As a result, wildfires can now quickly grow out of control, destroying homes and community infrastructure, wiping out carbon sequestration systems, and further contributing to climate change by emitting high volumes of carbon. Additionally, fire smoke and ash impact people’s air and water quality, often hundreds (or even thousands) of miles away.
In response, land managers are racing to restore our forests to a more natural and climate-resilient density. To do this, they must secure funding for timely and effective forest management strategies. The outcomes are wide-reaching, helping reduce wildfire risks, safeguard communities, restore forest health, protect air and water quality, and address carbon emissions, all at the same time.
Scientists at Blue Forest, Vibrant Planet and Northern Arizona University just unveiled new peer-reviewed research demonstrating the value of more proactive forest management in sequestering carbon, and exploring how carbon funding could serve as a powerful tool to boost funding to implement this work at scale. Their study (linked here), focusing on California’s American River watershed in the Sierra Nevada, offers a hopeful blueprint for tackling both climate change and wildfire resilience through innovative forest restoration practices.
Wildfire risk and carbon loss: a compounding crisis
California’s forests, historically shaped by low- and mixed-severity fires, have been thrown out of balance by decades of fire suppression making them overstocked. Wildfire, which naturally rolled through western lands every 5-100 years, depending on the location, has increased in severity, amplified by “fire weather,” increasingly common hot, dry, and windy conditions. As a result, forests are now overcrowded with higher fuel loads exposed to more extreme fire weather for longer and longer periods each year, making them prone to severe wildfires that devastate communities and ecosystems, and release significant amounts of carbon dioxide (and other pollutants) into the atmosphere. Recent estimates indicate that wildfires in California alone emit an average of 19 million metric tons of CO2 annually, the equivalent to ~75% of all homes in California. With climate change driving more frequent and intense fires, there is an urgent need for more proactive forest management.
Carbon revenue can close the $2B funding gap
It has been estimated that California faces a $2B annual funding gap to treat the 1 million acres across the state at highest risk of wildfire. One source of funding could come through carbon funding— generating revenue for forest restoration projects through carbon markets. Blue Forest and Vibrant Planet scientists paired a Dynamic Performance Benchmark (DPB) framework with forest growth and yield simulation to evaluate the carbon benefits of forest thinning and prescribed fire treatments compared to a “no-treatment” scenario. While initial treatments involve removing biomass that temporarily reduces carbon stocks, the findings from this study reveal that these interventions lead to increased carbon storage while reducing wildfire severity.
The study surfaced several key findings:
- Increased carbon storage: Modeled over a 25-year period, the team projects that forest treatments could increase carbon storage by an average of 35 metric tons of CO2 equivalent (tCO2e) per acre compared to unmanaged forests. Additionally, market-ready biomass utilization pathways—such as biochar production and biomass vaulting—can contribute an extra 6 to 23 tCO2e in benefits per acre.
- Carbon storage shifts to fire-resillient trees: This outcome is achieved by shifting carbon storage from smaller, fire-prone trees to larger, more fire-resilient ones. Forest management practices help forests become less susceptible to catastrophic carbon losses from wildfires, drought, and pests, leading to long-term carbon stability.
By tapping into voluntary and compliance carbon markets, forest restoration projects could generate up to $6,100 per acre in carbon revenue, potentially closing the $2B funding gap needed for forest management. Specifically:
- Increased forest carbon: $1,200 to $2,600 per acre from avoiding emissions and enhancing storage.
- Biomass utilization: $600 to $4,300 per acre from repurposing low-value biomass, often a disposal cost for land managers, can be transformed into biochar, fuels, or buried for long-term carbon storage.
Removing trees to save forests
Beyond carbon storage, the treatments modeled in this study significantly enhance forests' wildfire resilience. By drastically reducing the number of small diameter trees, thinning and prescribed burns decrease fire severity by 78% within five years. The remaining forest structure is more stable and fire resilient, withstanding disturbances that sustain carbon storage capacity over time, charted below:
What’s more, in a paper soon to be published in the same journal, Vibrant Planet scientists employ a full DPB approach, illustrating that the hotter, drier, and more fire-prone dynamics currently at play in California forests accelerate carbon return on investment, cutting timelines nearly in half.
Transitioning to a data-backed carbon sequestration system
The DPB approach, as demonstrated in this study, addresses carbon market over-crediting concerns identified with static baseline approaches by using real-time data from comparable reference regions to measure actual carbon benefits. While the increase in accuracy of the DPB method may improve trust in carbon markets, this shift introduces greater uncertainty in the timing and quantity of carbon revenue, which could deter some investors.To overcome these barriers, innovative financial mechanisms such as Environmental Impact Bonds and milestone-based Advance Market Commitments could play a crucial role. These tools tie funding to verified outcomes, providing upfront capital while ensuring accountability for long-term results. Scaling projects to a landscape level can further reduce risks and enhance the reliability of carbon benefits, making them more attractive to both public and private investors.
The path to restored, healthy forests
This collaboration between Blue Forest and Vibrant Planet scientists offers a powerful case study for the potential of carbon funding for addressing the intertwined challenges of wildfire risk and climate change. By providing financing for high-benefit projects, carbon and other forms of conservation finance could unlock a potential future that includes more sustainable forest management practices, delivering both environmental and economic benefits.
At Vibrant Planet, we’re committed to helping our partners understand the potential cost and benefits of their projects as part of their wildfire management and vegetation treatment planning. By incorporating this new approach to quantifying the carbon benefits of projects into our analyses, we aim to emphasize the critical value of ecosystem services in advancing potential projects, facilitating our partners in accessing carbon and other forms of conservation finance. And we hope to offer more cost-benefit quantifications in the future. For example, our scientists are generating similar methods to show improved air and water quality from reduced emissions and sedimentation.
As California and other fire-prone regions contend with the increasing impacts of climate-fueled wildfires, the findings from this study reinforce the urgency of data-driven wildfire resilience planning. States like California can leverage these insights to plan and implement accelerated forest management and targeted carbon neutrality actions.
When managed effectively, our forests can be restored to health, including ecological benefits of “good” wildfire, and continue to function as powerful, durable carbon sequestration systems.
