Healthy Forests For Our Future
This forester's guide describes ten forestry practices that increase the carbon stored in the forest within 20 years, while increasing the forest’s ability to adapt to climate change impacts.
Subject Tags
- Forest
- Climate resilience
- Ecosystem management
About
Climate-smart forest management refers to ways of managing forests that both maintain or increase the amount of carbon stored in the forest, and sustain or improve forest resilience (the forests' ability to survive and recover from climate impacts). In other words, forest management that helps prevent and prepare for climate change. Both in the US and globally, climate-smart forest management (sometimes called improved natural forest management) is a critical tool in the fight against climate change.
As we note in the attached Healthy Forests for our Future Guide, many climate-smart forest management practices require the assistance of trained foresters and harvesters. Some require materials, such as fencing, tree shelters/cages, or saplings. We know there are many landowners who are interested in these practices but could use financial incentives to help cover these costs. The Healthy Forests for our Future guide lists some of the potential funding sources that were available at the time of publication (late 2021).
To help those interested in accessing funding from the Natural Resources Conservation Service, we developed a crosswalk between the practices in the guide and fundable practices in the EQIP and other incentive programs. View the crosswalk here.
The Family Forest Carbon Program is a carbon market program that pays landowners to implement several of the practices detailed in the guide.