What is the potential for the land sector to mitigate climate change? How much carbon are forests sequestering each year? What is “improved forest management” and how can these activities enhance carbon sequestration capacity in forests? These are just a few of the questions that the strategic-level forest inventory in the United States is helping to address as humanity tackles the climate crisis.

Nature-based climate solutions (NCS) are land management, conservation, and restoration actions aimed at increasing carbon uptake and storage or reducing greenhouse gas emissions in the land sector across the globe. Northern Research Station scientists are using the strategic-level forest inventory in the United States to identify areas to target NCS, establish benchmarks to measure progress, and evaluate potential for future activities. Forests and the harvested wood products (HWP) obtained from them store more than three decades of carbon dioxide emitted from fossil fuels in the United States and offset more than 12 percent of emissions each year. However, the contribution of U.S. forest land to emissions offsets are slowly diminishing. Limiting forest land conversion to nonforest land uses can substantially reduce emissions and transfers of carbon to other lands. There are also opportunities, particularly in the western United States, to avoid carbon emissions associated with wildfire through land management activities which maintain long-term carbon storage in forests and utilize HWP resulting from fuel treatments. Finally, there are opportunities to enhance the carbon sequestration capacity of forests through improved forest management and reforestation activities on existing forest land. Collectively, these activities, which are informed by science and monitoring from the Forest Inventory and Analysis program, can maintain or enhance the role of forests in the United States and beyond as solutions to combat the climate crisis.