Thomas Harris
Can the expanding frontier of eucalyptus plantations in Brazil balance the supply of wood products with long term carbon storage and natural forest regeneration? We propose this shift in land cover through reforestation is dramatically increasing the aboveground carbon storage compared with surrounding land uses. We propose to document whether forest plantations are established on non-forested areas and that there is a co-occurring increase in protected native forest restoration. This framework creates the opportunity to increase carbon capture in working forest landscapes through both production and protection strategies. In addition, with the development of silvicultural techniques to sequester higher amounts of carbon in production forests and in the ability to both create longer-life wood products that can be substituted in building construction for high energy steel and cement, we suggest that there are multiple compounding synergistic pathways in carbon and climate mitigation in industrial reforestation that need to be evaluated.