Diversity of Carbon Storage Economics in Fertile Boreal Spruce (Picea Abies) Estates

Abstract

A “normal forest”, an idealized estate with a uniform distribution of stand ages, can be used in the study of sustainable management practices. As the normal forest contains a variety of stand ages, the characteristics of the stands can be represented in terms of a “normal stand”, with properties known as a function of age. This paper takes seven never-thinned stands as seven “normal stands”, which describe seven estates of normal forest. The intention is to study the robustness of carbon storage microeconomics to varying estate characteristics. It was found that the economically optimal rotation ages vary. The state sums of volume and capitalization, corresponding to any optimal rotation, also vary significantly. Growth rates vary more than the optimal expected stand volumes. Consequently, any excess volume related to carbon storage adds on to an almost unified basic volume. For all seven normal estates, the most economical way of increasing carbon storage is to increase the size of trees retained in thinning from above.