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TOM WHEELER:

Welcome to the EcoNews Report. I'm your host this week, Tom Wheeler, executive director of Epic, the Environmental Protection Information Center. And joining me is Shane Coffield. Shane is a postdoctoral researcher at the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, and he is a ecosystem ecologist, and he studies the kind of intersection between climate and carbon and forest. So Shane, welcome to the EcoNews Report.

SHANE COFFIELD:

Thank you for having me.

WHEELER:

Alright, we are going to be talking about a new paper that you just published and congratulations by the way. And this paper has huge ramifications for California's cap and trade system, particularly our use of forest carbon offsets within the cap and trade program. Let's let's start broadly at what the heck this cap and trade program is and how we, how we use force growth to allow for carbon emissions coming from elsewhere in our economy. Do you do you want to give an overview of this system?

COFFIELD:

Sure. And so California's cap and trade system was launched well over a decade ago now. And it was basically just a system in place to set a total limit on our emissions which declines over time. So it applies to large emitters across California sets a limit on the total amount of carbon that they're allowed to admit and that declines over time. But the sort of interesting part that we think about is that as one small part of that emissions reduction obligation, large emitters are allowed to purchase, verified carbon offsets And so that brings in the carbon offsets program, specifically the compliance offsets of what we're thinking about. So of those offsets, the largest are usually in the form of forest carbon offsets. So basically the idea is that you can continue emitting a small amount as long as that is is offset by carbon that's being taken out of the atmosphere somewhere else in this case by forests. So forests, trees, size, they take carbon out of the atmosphere, a lot of that carbon ends up in their actual physical biomass like in the trunk and the body of the tree and makes its way into the soil. And so we're just thinking about how can we make sure that these these forest projects that are that are issued credits by the state and receive payment for sequestering or storing carbon are actually doing that?

WHEELER:

Right. So with these forest offset projects, one of the big principles is addition Al Itty. Right. So we want to ensure that because of a change in management as a result of enrolling these projects within this offset system, that there's going to be extra carbon being stored, perhaps that might mean that there was an area that you're planning to log and now you're going to have a longer rotation period, you're not gonna log it for the next 100 years and and so there's going to be extra carbon stored as a result of your participation in this program than there otherwise would be. Is that correct?

COFFIELD:

Yeah, that's exactly right. That's kind of the central principle is that a project is leading to carbon storage, that wouldn't otherwise occur and isn't otherwise required by law.

WHEELER:

So, this idea of addition, al it is really important because on one hand, what what we're doing is we're allowing other people to purchase your carbon credits and emit more carbon than the otherwise would be able to. And so we're depending on on this trade that you're paying somebody else to do better management. So, if you're a stationary source of emissions. Right? So a large power plant, you might be wanting to purchase these carbon credits so that you can reduce the total amount of carbon emissions that you're on paper responsible for. So ensuring that we have this additional itty that the money is actually going to sequestering more carbon than what than would have occurred in some business as usual scenario, that's really, really key to this system functioning and being honest, and actually achieving the carbon reductions that we need to occur.

COFFIELD:

Yeah, exactly. It's set up on this idea that a ton of carbon coming out from industry is equivalent to a ton of carbon that's being taken up by a forest. So there's not really room for error in that. And we need to make sure that that that one ton of carbon is actually going into a forest, it wouldn't otherwise wouldn't otherwise occur.

WHEELER:

So now that we have this background, right? We need to figure out that this is actually working the way that it says, it's working. That's a good place to introduce your study. Do you want to outline what you looked at and why? You you look at this data?

COFFIELD:

Sure. In our study, we basically take take a step back and think about what additional itty means at a very basic level, this idea of of carbon storage that wouldn't otherwise occur. And we kind of set up a framework for for assessing that that's different from the system that the state agency Carb has set out involving measuring carbon stocks against a baseline. And specifically, we are study is unique in that we leverage these remote sensing or the satellite based data sets that are really useful in comparing what's happening in the carbon offset projects, these patches of forests, Two other similar forests, to get an idea of like what what otherwise might actually be happening in real time, and also to compare them historically to what it used to be happening in that area going back into the 1980s. So, so basically we set up this new framework and we kind of evaluate different hypotheses to see if there's actually evidence that this is new carbon storage.

WHEELER:

So you say, you you you use remote sensing, so things like satellite imagery to be able to look at whether carbon is being accumulated in forests and why why remote sensing, Why is this an important contribution and add some level of verifiability to, to offsets

COFFIELD:

Yeah, great question. A couple of reasons. First of all, it's, I would say that it's systematic and that we can lay out this approach for comparing a project to other areas like immediately surrounding it or to a larger force in general and and over a longer time period. So, so it's about setting up this type of analysis that's otherwise not possible with just the ground based data sets that are, that might be restricted to a specific area where an inventory was done or might not even be an accessible data. And so that leads to the other part of it is that all of these data sets are publicly available. Really transparent types of analyses that anyone could go in and look at this data and compare so both for for carbon disc carbon stocks as well as harvest. So there's a new a new product developed by john Wayne, who's another researcher at UC Irvine. So we can actually go in with satellite data and look at at the patches of clear cut that have been happening to to see how much logging is happening on these lands compared to other areas. That's otherwise a type of data that's not easily available at all to my knowledge, especially these larger scales

WHEELER:

And to bring this home Shane. This is a show that airs primarily in northwest California, which is coincidentally a large area of your study. So you're looking at carbon offset projects from well known entities like Green Diamond Resource companies, Sierra Pacific Industries, Who else are you looking at for your data for this study?

COFFIELD:

Yeah, those are two of the large, the sort of the largest timber companies that we look at. But the owners of these offset projects can be a whole variety of different types of people. And companies, a large number of them are these like what we call large timber companies. There's also just kind of small scale landowners, families, tribes also own several, several of the projects. So, so we kind of compare these different landowners and what's going on in these projects.

WHEELER:

Alright, let's talk about the results of your study and then we can talk about how you arrived at your conclusions and why these are important. So generally, I would say that that your study suggests that addition, al Itty is, is questionable for a large number of, of carbon projects, is that right?

COFFIELD:

Yes. Yeah, I think exactly. We don't go so far as to say that it's that we can conclude that it's completely zero. We just like definitely cast doubt on whether or not there is additional itty in these projects.

WHEELER:

So, meaning we we can't ensure that as a result of enrolling these projects were gaining more carbon stored than if they would have just been managed like any other land in their ownership,

COFFIELD:

correct?

WHEELER:

So first conclusion, and we can talk about why it's important and how you arrive there. So quote most force in northwest California have been accumulating carbon since at least the mid-80s and continue to accumulate carbon whether enrolled in offset projects or not. So what, what does that mean?

COFFIELD:

This first part is looking historically, what's already been happening in these, in these lands and a lot of these coastal redwood parts of Northwestern California in particular, There's been a trend since as far back as we can see in our record, which is the 80s that the carbon has been increasing over time. And this is likely kind of a recovery from really intense harvest that happened back in the 50s and 60s. And so that's just that's kind of what's naturally happening as the carbon is going up. And so now we come in with the carbon offsets program and it sets a flat baseline such that any carbon above that baseline is considered to be additional by the current system. and so the carbon continues program starts in 2012, carbon is still increasing. A lot of credits are being issued for that increase in carbon over time. And so we argue that it's you can't necessarily attribute that to specific management that's happened as a result of the offsets program. It was it was already going on.

WHEELER:

Alright, so next we have harvest rates were high in timber company projects before the initiation of these improved force management projects, suggesting that they are earning carbon credits for force and recovery. Talk to me about that.

COFFIELD:

This is the second part that's just looking Before projects even start, what's been happening on these lands already. And we did find especially for the large timber companies. Sierra Pacific industries owns for pretty big projects and more the interior part of northern California. We found that these tend to be preferentially on lands that have been harvested more intensely in the past 20 or so years of our record and especially in the past 10 or seven years leading up to the offsets program. So we just kind of flagged that as being a little bit suspicious and that these these areas have been harvested a lot. They're going to be recovering from that harvest, increasing their carbon stocks. So it's kind of interesting that they're still able to have carbon that's above above baseline to receive credit. And and also to be increasing carbon over time.

WHEELER:

So specifically for S. P. I. They are offset project lands have been harvested 26% more than their other properties. So they are perhaps taking advantage just natural regeneration in this forest land.

COFFIELD:

Right? Which is something that's supposed to be protected against in the system setting setting a baseline. But somehow these areas have are really productive lands that have been harvested heavily are still above baseline and receiving credits even though they might just be recovering from that recent harvest.

WHEELER:

Alright third projects are often located on land with higher densities of low value timber species. So what do you mean by that?

COFFIELD:

Yeah, this is maybe the most interesting part of my opinion. Looking going back again to the northwestern part of the state. The redwood forests that are what we consider to be really valuable in terms of the for the timber market, that there's demand for redwood, we find that projects are more likely to be put preferentially on lands that have already had the redwood harvested out and are instead in these patches of tan oak trees that are kind of the less value that don't really have a timber value and grow back. So especially in the case of Green Diamond, we find that it's pretty clear that their project land is is I would almost use words like gerrymandered for lack of a better term, like the way these polygons have been drawn around these patches of disproportionately tan oak, leaving sort of, the rest of their properties is really enriched in redwood, they can continue harvesting. I would say that it's a pretty clear example in this case, the Green diamond of of a non additional project because they're basically getting paid to protect these lands. They aren't at risk of logging in the first place.

WHEELER:

So the Green Diamond lands have nearly double the fraction of tan oak, which is a less valuable timber species. You don't really make much from tan oak. It is, it is considered almost a pest if you're a timber manager and they only have 1/6 the redwood of other properties. So these are areas that unless they have some sort of very active intervention, they use herbicides to get rid of the tan oak and then are able to replant with thrifty coniferous species. These are areas are are functionally not going to be logged very often anyways, because there's not a lot to log, there's not good commercial timber available to remove. So taking them offline, taking them off the market doesn't seem like a big loss to green diamond unless they were otherwise planning to convert these Timberlands or convert these largely tan up stands back to redwood stands or something along those lines.

COFFIELD:

Exactly

WHEELER:

the news report, we're talking with Shane Coffield an ecologist studying climate and carbon about his new research concerning California's forced offset program. So for carbon accumulation rates have not yet increased on lands that enroll as offset projects relative to their pre enrollment levels. Talk to me about that.

COFFIELD:

Yeah, these last two parts are gonna be looking for a change after the projects initiate. So, doing that before versus after comparison is something different. It's not necessarily a requirement, but it's something that we would hope to see that a new a new type of management is being introduced to store carbon. So we don't see in general across the set of 37 projects in California that we look at that the rate of carbon storage is increasing once the project start the caveat that with we only have a, I believe about a seven or so your record that we can look at with the status set post initiation with the earliest projects starting around 2012. But pretty concerning that over that record, we don't yet see an an increase in the rate of carbon storage relative to what it was before. So like I was talking about before in the Northwestern, it was part of California. It was already increasing now it's if anything is actually slowing down a little bit in across Northwestern California, whether it's in a project or not. And then in the interior part of the state, it's been pretty flat and is staying flat for projects even after they start.

WHEELER:

So are you saying that the amount of, of carbon that is being sequestered on these enrolled lands where there's supposedly some change in management practice is matching the same amount of carbon that is being sequestered generally across all the other reference lands, generally across the whole region or specifically, we're not seeing we're not seeing very heavy carbon increases in specifically just in these enrolled lands.

COFFIELD:

Both the second, the second part is what I'm trying to emphasize here

WHEELER:

is that

COFFIELD:

there's not a change once the project starts for just that patch of land compared to what was happening before.

WHEELER:

And there could be. Do we have any understanding of this is because of management practices, Are they still allowed to go in and remove some amount of carbon or is this because we have a changing climate and forests are not putting on carbon in the same way that we had anticipated at the outside of this project when we maybe had less drought like conditions or lower temperatures or what have you?

COFFIELD:

Yeah, I think, I think it's a little bit of both projects enrolled. They usually have, it's it might only be a sentence or two, but it's some statement of their proposed management activities, whether it's like extending their rotation length of their forests for example, but otherwise they're not required to like show evidence that they're actually harvesting less. All that matters is that they keep their carbon stocks above that baseline that the state set. So basically there were kind of finding that there isn't evidence of a changing practice. This ties into the fifth part to like looking at the harvest, that we don't find evidence that the harvest rate is decreasing on these lands, even though they might have, you know, put that sentence into the beginning saying that they would increase the rotation length

WHEELER:

so that that's pretty wild to me this fifth conclusion, harvest rates have not decreased on most project land since offset project initiation. I just always operated under the assumption that you put you put some parcel in into an offset project that it would effectively be hands off management and it's just going to they're just gonna allow the forest to be a forest and not go in and remove timber, but timber companies are are actually harvesting in these lands. That that's what's happening. Yeah. Alright. So, so we have, let's let's try to summarize here. So we have an assumption that that baseline carbon sequestration is gonna be flat, but in fact it's increasing and so they're getting some additional benefit. They're able to claim some additional benefit that might not truly exist. Right?

COFFIELD:

Right. Just from riding that that wave of like what what's the trend for forests generally? And in the northwestern part of the state,

WHEELER:

timber companies also sound like they're cherry picking their lands to have areas that will be either high end non commercial species, like what green diamond has done or in the case of sierra pacific industries, they are choosing lands that have have been recently harvested. So you're going to naturally see a quick regeneration because you're gonna have young trees that are just gonna shoot up really fast. That's what trees like to do at the beginning of their life. So you're you're putting on a lot of carbon but that's gonna happen regardless. And even still, we are not seeing the carbon accumulation that we would have anticipated seen on these enrolled lands that that should be there right there. They're not producing in the way that we thought that they would produce.

COFFIELD:

Yeah, they're not they're not outperforming relative to what they were doing before or relative to similar forests over the same time period.

WHEELER:

All right. So some pretty wild findings. Let's talk about how you arrive at these. Can you talk about your data sets and how you can measure carbon using something like a satellite image. How how are you arriving at these conclusions?

COFFIELD:

Sure. So we're leveraging some pre existing data sets. We compare two different ones called that were developed out of Oregon state. They're based originally on land sat data which is this 30 m spectral data Basically you can can use that and based on the information that you're collecting at every 30 m pixel. The way that the algorithm behind that data set works is that they basically match it to similar forests that they have an inventory for and then can kind of associate and interpret the exact amount of biomass or carbon. That's there. Another data set is for harvesting so that this was the one developed at a U. C. I. Or U. C. Irvine as well. And It can it's based on a change detection algorithm. So it goes in and it can identify for a patch of land but it looks like a force before and now the forest is gone. It can flag that. And so we have at every 30 m pixel. Whether or not a patch of land has been harvested each year.

WHEELER:

So like roughly it might look at something like pixel color. So if it's green we we know that there's still force their when you see brown, that means it's been clear cut, something like that.

COFFIELD:

Yeah. With a lot more complicated

WHEELER:

roughly dumbing it down to my level. Let's just play dumb Shane.

COFFIELD:

No, that's exactly right.

WHEELER:

And so how how can you use all these these sources together to to figure out that to arrive at your conclusions right, connect connect the dots from. Yeah.

COFFIELD:

So so there's some we have some like caveats in our paper. Really important to acknowledge that there's limitations of these datasets. They're not perfect. But going back to kind of an original point is that the really powerful tools because we get this systematic analysis, we can see every 30 m pixel across California in terms of carbon and harvest history every year. Going back to the eighties. So this allows us to compare exactly what's hap In these project areas to what's happening like just nearby to them. Like in a two km, like a buffer ring that we draw around them compared to all other private forests in in a broader region. So we set up this this way of doing comparisons to look for differences to see our projects outperforming relative to these other areas and relative to historically what we would expect otherwise.

WHEELER:

So for something like species composition. Right? So we have this idea that green diamond is preferentially trying to delineate areas of high tan oak to include in their projects. How can you see that using this satellite imagery? How can you be sure that whatever this pixel is is is dominated by tan oak as opposed to redwood.

COFFIELD:

So this is done by the it's the limit data set that comes out of Oregon state and the ideas similar to for the biomass, you have all the spectral information, but you can think of as color that the satellite observes but sort of in in more detail and it can basically identify the difference between tan oak and redwood and it knows based on training to where we we do have really good on the ground data where inventories have been done, we know what a patch of forest looks like and this is the spectral characteristics of that that you would see from space. So you kind of set up a system based on where inventories have been done by the Forest Service and then you can basically blow that up to a landscape scale across California.

WHEELER:

Alright, so you you're comparing the satellite imagery to areas on the ground that we already know. And so you're able to train the machine to recognize that like this color of green looks like you're generally is associated with this forest type and that's that's how we're able to take satellite imagery and figure out species composition on the ground.

COFFIELD:

Yes.

WHEELER:

Wild, very cool,

COFFIELD:

pretty powerful to be able to do that in a large scale

WHEELER:

and in terms of biomass accumulation, how how can you, again, the answer is probably the colors of green are maybe different, but how can you look at at one forest that perhaps hasn't been logged and recognize whether the trees are getting bigger fatter and putting on more carbon in that forest.

COFFIELD:

This is something where some of the limitations of the data products come in for a really full forest like identity. It's not necessarily that great at detecting those differences, but but it does, there are algorithms and therefore calculating carbon growth over time for what's considered like a stable forest.

WHEELER:

So I I imagine the algorithms are built on a similar principle as the, as we talked about before for species composition, which is you looked at a lot of data and then you're able to match as best you can changes and make make an informed yes on whether or not there's growth occurring,

COFFIELD:

right? So everything is trained on areas that we do have really good ground level data from the Forest Service and then the remote sensing can be used to fill in the gaps basically.

WHEELER:

So this, this brings us to this really cool moment in time that we live in where we have powerful enough computers. We have, we have satellite imagery that is fine grained enough that we're able to finally confirm, we're able to look for biases in systems like the Right, this probably wouldn't have been able to have been done 5, 10 years ago. Is that right?

COFFIELD:

Definitely. I think we're like just sort of on the cusp of that. And this paper is one of the first perhaps demonstrations that these satellite based data sets can be really helpful in the context of carbon offsets and carbon monitoring. And this is also at the same time that there's lots of investment and for these kind of applications. Nasa in particular has a carbon monitoring system. There's a new mission called Jedi G E D I that is going to do much better jobs that carbon retrievals. So we are basically trying to set up this framework of of how this these analyses could be done and how an agency like Carb could choose to use remote sensing data, especially as as the data.

WHEELER:

Yeah, let's talk about the ramifications of this. So I imagine carbon wants to have verifiable objective data. They want to truly achieve carbon reductions. How would you suggest that they use this new suite of tools that we have at our fingertips to improve the force offset program.

COFFIELD:

Yeah, I think that's kind of the main point of the papers that we want this to be a constructive criticism of the offsets program. We're not trying to just tear it down completely but identify these weaknesses and potential ways that large scale landowners in particular might be receiving credits and following the rules, even though they're not necessarily doing anything different. So we set up some suggestions basically that the state could do what we've we've done here and not just have a flat baseline that carbon stocks are measured against, but to actually look for some evidence either historically or compared to other lands that something different is happening in project land. So might call that a dynamic baseline rather than a static baseline. I think some other entities and the carbon offset space are starting to think about this more as well where you would sort of a next generation or a new system would involve assigning an offset project, another patch of forest that might serve that would be like the control that you're that you're measuring against. That that could be really powerful to It could be really powerful too. Because you could then issue credits for just maintaining carbon stocks that might otherwise decline from forest fires. Right? Like that baseline doesn't have to be flat, it could be pas it could be negative but just sort of a more systematic way to really make sure that we're giving credits to additional carbon storage.

WHEELER:

Absolutely. Well, Shane, thank you so much for being my guest here today. I will post a link to Shane's paper using remote sensing to quantify the additional climate benefits of California Forest carbon offset projects in the show notes, which you can find on the lost coast outpost dot com again, Shane. Thank you so much for joining the Econews Report.

COFFIELD:

Yeah. Thanks. Thanks for having me.

WHEELER:

Alright, join us again on this time and channel next week for more environmental news from the North Coast of California.