From clean water and diverse wildlife habitats to jobs and other economic opportunities, Minnesota’s forests provide an array of benefits. Comprising 17.7 million acres, about 22 percent of the state’s total land area, they also serve as a vital tool in the fight against a warming climate by acting as carbon sinks, absorbing carbon dioxide (CO2) from the atmosphere and storing it in trees and soil. For Minnesotans, knowing how much carbon our forests store – and, perhaps even more importantly, how management decisions affect that storage – is essential for developing effective climate strategies, particularly to meet the state’s goal of reaching carbon neutrality by 2050.
Recent research led by Forest Resources Associate Professor John Zobel and funded by the Minnesota Forest Resources Council (MFRC) aims to help policy makers and land managers understand how carbon moves through the forestry sector by capturing the full, complex life cycle – all the way from the forest floor through the decay or recycling of a wood product. It’s a challenge that required synthesizing two different “stories” that have rarely been combined before, says Zobel – that of the carbon life cycle within a forest and that of its life cycle within forest products themselves.
The result is a comprehensive, statewide study that is one of the first of its kind to map the full carbon life cycle, model four different land management strategies (ranging from leaving a forest untouched to sustainably maximizing the revenue we can get from it), and assesses how those management strategies affect the forestry sector’s carbon impact. This integrated view of the forestry sector's role in climate mitigation is an important new tool for decision makers in the state.
“Thanks to the University of Minnesota’s leadership on this groundbreaking research, Minnesota is gaining vital knowledge to help achieve ambitious climate action goals,” shares Eric Schenck, MFRC executive director. “The study provides a clearer picture of forestry sector contributions to offsetting Minnesota’s greenhouse gas emissions while contributing science-driven insights to inform new, timely strategies that further strengthen carbon sequestration and storage in forests and forest products, in balance with other forest values.”
Now that the study has wrapped up, the research team and MFRC have shifted focus to making the information widely accessible to Minnesotans. This fall, they partnered with Zobel, UMN Extension Forestry Program Coordinator Emily Dombeck, and Sustainable Forests Education Cooperative (SFEC) Manager and Extension Expert Eli Sagor to develop a short, accessible guide for the general public, policy makers, and land managers. The University’s U-Spatial team also developed an interactive dashboard to describe the project’s results, offering another way to dig into the data. Most recently, MFRC collaborated with Forest Resources and SFEC to host a symposium for land managers focused on how the research can inform on-the-ground management decisions. Together, the team is helping Minnesotans understand carbon in the forestry industry while also supporting the continuation of the forest services Minnesotans rely on.
Want to learn more? Visit the MFRC Minnesota Forest Carbon Research webpage, where you can access the Forest Carbon Fact Sheet, the full Carbon Research Report, and the interactive dashboard.