Globally, forests play an important role in climate change mitigation. However, land-use impacts the ability of forests to sequester and store carbon. Here we quantify the impacts of five divergent future land-use scenarios on aboveground forest carbon stocks and fluxes throughout New England. These scenarios, four co-designed with stakeholders from throughout the region and the fifth a continuation of recent trends in land use, were simulated by coupling a land cover change model with a mechanistic forest growth model to produce estimates of aboveground carbon over 50 years. Future carbon removed through harvesting and development was tracked using a standard carbon accounting methodology, modified to fit our modeling framework. Of the simulated changes in land use, changes in harvesting had the most profound and immediate impacts on carbon stocks and fluxes. In one of the future land-use scenarios including a rapid expansion of harvesting for biomass energy, this changed New England forests from a net carbon sink to a net carbon source in 2060. Also in these simulations, relatively small reductions in harvest intensities (e.g., 10% reduction), coupled with an increased percent of wood going into longer-term storage, led to substantial reductions in net carbon emissions (909 MMtCO2eq) as compared to a continuation of recent trends in land use. However, these projected gains in carbon storage and reduction in emissions from less intense harvesting regimes can only be realized if it is paired with a reduction in the consumption of the timber products, and their replacements, that otherwise would result in additional emissions from leakage and substitution.

中文翻译：

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土地使用重要吗？新英格兰替代土地使用期货的碳影响

在全球范围内，森林在缓解气候变化中发挥着重要作用。但是，土地利用会影响森林封存和储存碳的能力。在这里，我们量化了五种不同的未来土地利用情景对整个新英格兰地区地上森林碳储量和通量的影响。这些情景是与整个地区的利益相关者共同设计的，其中四种是情景，第五种是土地利用的最新趋势的延续，是通过将土地覆被变化模型与机械性森林生长模型耦合以对50年间的地上碳进行估算来模拟的。使用标准的碳会计方法对通过收割和开发除去的未来碳进行了跟踪，并对其进行了修改以适合我们的建模框架。在模拟的土地利用变化中，收成的变化对碳储量和通量产生了最深刻和最直接的影响。在未来的土地利用情景中，包括迅速扩大对生物质能的采集，这在2060年将新英格兰的森林从净碳汇变为净碳源。同样在这些模拟中，收成强度的降低幅度较小（例如（减少10％），再加上用于长期储存的木材百分比增加，与最近土地使用趋势的持续发展相比，导致净碳排放量大幅减少（909 MMtCO2eq）。但是，只有在减少木材产品及其替代品的消耗量的同时，才能实现这些预计的碳储存增加和强度降低的采伐方式减少的排放量。