Storing carbon in the forest

A recently severed trunk stands in forest land near McKinleyville, Calif. Forests are central to Earth’s climate because, like oceans, they are a carbon “sink.”  (Spencer Weiner / Los Angeles Times)

A new house was built into the forest near McKinleyville, Calif., not far from the privately preserved Van Eck forest, which is storing carbon to be counted toward California’s global warming reductions.  (Spencer Weiner / Los Angeles Times)

Mary D. Nichols, left, chairwoman of the California Air Resources Board, tours the Van Eck forest. “We have hundreds of thousands of acres of forests that can play a role in helping us to prevent global warming,” she said.  (Spencer Weiner / Los Angeles Times)

“We have to accelerate our efforts to become more efficient,” state Air Resources Board Chairwoman Mary Nichols said.  (Spencer Weiner / Los Angeles Times)

Mark Andre, deputy director of environmental services for Arcata, calls to resident owls while on a tour of the Van Eck forest, a 2,200-acre spread in Humboldt County that does well by doing good.  (Spencer Weiner / Los Angeles Times)

“Forests can be managed like a long-term carbon bank,” says Laurie Wayburn, president of the Pacific Forest Trust, a San Francisco-based nonprofit that oversees the Van Eck forest.  (Spencer Weiner / Los Angeles Times)

Schmidbauer Lumber in Eureka, Calif., has logs ready for shipment at the end of the 2008 harvest season. “The timber industry wants ‘business as usual’ practices, like clear-cutting, to qualify for carbon credit,” said said Brian Nowicki, a forest specialist with the Center for Biological Diversity.  (Spencer Weiner / Los Angeles Times)

Forest owners can earn far more by full-scale logging or selling to developers. But if offset values rise under mandatory climate regulations, they could offer a counterweight to development pressure. The U.S. annually loses an estimated 1.5ƒ|million acres of private forest to urban sprawl.  (Spencer Weiner / Los Angeles Times)

Former forest land near McKinleyville, Calif., has been clear-cut. Whether California’s forests can be recruited to wage a climate war is linked to the eventual price of offsets.  (Spencer Weiner / Los Angeles Times)