March 24, 2022. With Josh Rapp and Laura Marx.
Forests help fight climate change by sequestering and storing carbon. At the same time, the impacts of climate change that we’re already seeing in Massachusetts are damaging our forests and compromising their ability to store carbon into the future. The Nature Conservancy, Mass Audubon, and other partners have developed a list of climate-smart forest management practices that increase both forest carbon and forest resilience to climate change. We will explain how these practices were chosen with a wide range of stakeholders, what they look like on the ground, and how landowners can get access to funding to do the practices. In Massachusetts, some landowners and their foresters and harvesters have been doing this type of climate-smart forest management for years. With a new focus on their carbon benefits, there are several emerging incentive programs that can connect willing landowners with the funding, planning, and materials to carry them out.
