Effect of Silvicultural Treatments on Carbon Storage of Northern Hardwood Forests

This study is designed to provide forest managers and landowners with tools to estimate the effect of forest management on carbon storage, investigating living tree biomass, detritus, and harvested wood products as variables. Thinning, selection cutting, and uncutting were applied to the three different forest types in New York, USA. Carbon storage of the original stands was 90, 56, and $101Mg\;ha^{-1}$ at the Allegheny hardwood forest, Northern hardwood forest, and Oak - black cherry forest, respectively. Among treatments, uncutting generally stored the greatest amount carbon. However, the rate of carbon storage was the smallest at the uncut treatment in all the sites. The 50% thinning, 50% selection, and 50% thinning treatments were the highest rate of carbon storage at the Allegheny hardwood forest, Northern hardwood forest, and Oak - cherry forest, respectively. In this study, only short term was applied to simulate carbon sequestration after silvicultural treatment. So, more research is needed to determine whether any silvicultural treatment can store significantly more carbon than no treatment over the long term.