Oregon’s land use program: a proven climate strategy
June 12th, 2009 by Jim JustWhen Oregon’s land use planning program began 36 years ago, its aim was to protect commercial forest and farm land from development.
Nobody was thinking about carbon storage and reducing emissions back then. A new study by Jim Cathcart, forest resource trust manager with the Oregon Department of Forestry, and Jeff Kline, a research forester with Pacific Northwest (PNW) Research Station in Corvallis, quantifies these contributions.
Kline and Cathcarts estimated carbon benefits for two scenarios: one assuming Oregon’s land use planning program as enacted in 1973 and another assuming Oregon’s land use planning program was not enacted in 1973.They estimate that 1,221,000 acres of forest and agricultural land in western Oregon would have been converted to more developed uses without the land use planning program.
By maintaining these lands, the gains in carbon storage are equivalent to avoiding 1.7 million metric tons of carbon dioxide emissions per year. That’s the amount of carbon that would have been emitted by 395,000 cars in a year (assuming each car gets 25 mpg and is driven 12,000 miles annually).
Had the additional 1.7 million metric tons of stored carbon been released through development, Oregon’s annual increase in CO2 emissions between 1990 and 2000 would have been three times what it actually was.
By 2024, avoided development on an additional 205,000 acres of forest and agricultural land will yield an additional 3.5 million metric tons of avoided carbon losses, equivalent to roughly a 12.8 million metric ton reduction in CO2 emissions, or 0.64 million metric tons CO2 per year.
Kline says the study’s findings are pretty conservative because carbon stored in soil and dead wood wasn’t considered. The study just looked at avoided forest loss and changes in carbon stock arising from development, not at the higher carbon footprint of average domestic use over agriculture. If other factors such as more compact development, people driving less, and using public transportation were to be considered, the reduction in emissions would be even higher.
Cathcart says we shouldn’t sit back and wait for stronger climate change policies such as market-driven cap-and-trade schemes or carbon taxesto be adopted:
It may simply be the act of maintaining or increasing the amount of land area in forest cover that is the most important action to take.