Carbon Storage in the Acadian Forest: Estimating carbon storage and associated dynamics of a privately owned small woodlot in the Acadian Forest Region.

Abstract

Restoring carbon sinks in the Acadian Forest Region of Canada has the potential to reduce atmospheric carbon dioxide levels, subsequently mitigating the effects of anthropogenic climate change and increasing acidification of the oceans. By managing and receiving financial compensation for carbon storage, landowners and managers will by default restore degraded forests closer to an old-growth condition. These forests have the added value of providing more habitat types that are currently underrepresented in the Acadian Forest Region. For landowners to receive financial compensation for carbon storage, carbon dynamics, such as current carbon storage, must be quantified in an efficient and cost effective manner. This project quantified carbon storage in living and dead pools on a 20.8 hectare woodlot north of the village of Port Joli, NS. This was done by breaking the woodlot into four stand types based on dominant tree species and by using a representative, stratified random sampling method that estimated each of the carbon pools (with the exception of mineral soil carbon storage). It is estimated that, in total, that 3240 Mg carbon are stored in four different stand types on the entire woodlot. The potential correlation between depth of and amount of carbon in the organic layer was measured and found to be statistically significant. Given that sampling of the organic layer was by far the most time consuming and costly of the sampling methods, it is recommended that further investigation into this relationship be done to develop a prediction equation that could be used to easily and cost effectively estimate the amount of carbon in the organic layer. The data collected here can be used in the future to further investigate the carbon dynamics of woodlot carbon dynamics, such as monitoring changes in carbon storage with time and management practices, as well as used to calibrate national carbon budget models like the CBM-CFS3.