BILL ANALYSIS
AB 1504
Page 1
Date of Hearing: January 11, 2010
ASSEMBLY COMMITTEE ON NATURAL RESOURCES
Nancy Skinner, Chair
AB 1504 (Skinner) - As Amended: January 4, 2010
SUBJECT : Forest resources: carbon sequestration
SUMMARY : Requires the California Department of Forestry and
Fire Protection (CDF), in consultation with the Air Resources
Board (ARB), by March 1, 2012, to assess the capacity of its
forest and rangeland regulations to meet or exceed the state's
greenhouse gas (GHG) reduction goals, pursuant to the
California Global Warming Solutions Act of 2006 (AB 32).
EXISTING LAW :
1)Requires ARB, pursuant to AB 32, to adopt a statewide GHG
emissions limit equivalent to 1990 levels by 2020 and adopt
regulations to achieve maximum technologically feasible and
cost-effective GHG emission reductions. ARB is required to
adopt and update every five years a scoping plan for achieving
these reductions from sources or categories of sources.
2)Requires CDF, pursuant to the Z'berg-Nejedly Forest Practice
Act (Act) of 1973, to create and maintain a comprehensive
system of regulation of all timberlands to assure that: where
feasible, the productivity of timberlands is restored,
enhanced, and maintained and; the goal of maximum sustained
yield of high-quality timber products is achieved while giving
consideration to values relating to recreation, watershed,
wildlife, range and forage, fisheries, regional economic
vitality, employment, and aesthetic enjoyment.
FISCAL EFFECT : Unknown
THIS BILL :
1)By March 1, 2012, requires CDF, in consultation with ARB, to
assess the capacity of its forest and rangeland regulations
and non-regulatory forestry programs to meet or exceed the
state's greenhouse gas reduction goals. At a minimum, CDF
must consider:
a) Whether relevant statutory or regulatory requirements
AB 1504
Page 2
governing a timber harvesting plan, sustained yield plan or
its equivalent, non-industrial timber management plan, or
any other discretionary approval for timber harvesting are
sufficient to ensure a net reduction or sequestration of
carbon emissions from primary forest carbon sources, sinks
or reservoirs.
b) Whether regulations governing conversion of timberland
and forestland, as defined, to non-timber and non-forest
uses are sufficient to offset lost sequestration capacity
and carbon emissions associated with the non-timber use.
c) Whether forest growth, harvest and conversion
information obtained through CDF's regulatory and
non-regulatory programs and other local, state and federal
sources is sufficient and reliable to track changes in
carbon stocks, including net emissions and reductions,
across the state's forested landscape.
2)By December 1, 2011, CDF must publish a draft assessment,
including any recommendations, for a 30-day public review and
comment period.
3)Requires ARB, in consultation with CDF, to convene an
independent panel of no less than three qualified experts to
peer-review the draft assessment. At least two experts shall
be selected from academia. CDF must incorporate the panel's
findings or recommendations or describe in writing the
reasons, based on substantial evidence, for rejecting a
finding or recommendation.
4)Defines "net reduction or sequestration of carbon emissions"
to mean an increase in carbon stocks over time of a primary
forest carbon source, sink or reservoir compared to a
baseline.
5)Defines "primary forest carbon source, sink or reservoir" to
include standing live or dead trees, soil, shrubs and
herbaceous understory, lying dead wood, litter, duff, and
forest products.
COMMENTS :
1)Purpose : According to the author's office, this bill is
necessary to ensure that CDF's assessment is completed in a
timely manner, and to ensure that it reflects the most
AB 1504
Page 3
defensible science on carbon sequestration and forestry
practices. The bill essentially codifies Task #2 of the
Interagency Forestry Working Group (IFWG), established in
December 2008 by the Natural Resources Agency, California
Environmental Protection Agency, and ARB as the official
forestry subgroup of the Climate Action Team to provide
guidance on all forest-related climate strategies and
policies. The IRWG proposed Task #2 (in addition to 3 other
tasks) on May 6, 2009 and set a completion date of November
2009. However, presumably due to resource constraints,
including state employee furloughs, this deadline was not met.
On November 24, the IFWG outlined a work plan for Task #2
though it did not include any timeline for completion.
At the same time, but in a different venue, CDF appears to
have already answered the questions posed by Task #2. In a
November 12, 2009 memo, responding to concerns raised by the
Department of Fish Game regarding the climate impacts of a
non-industrial timber management plan (NTMP), CDF concludes,
without any supporting documentation, that "?the provisions of
the [Forest Practices Act] and [Forest Practice Rules] while
not specifically targeted to address GHG relationships will
support the targets for the Forest Sector" identified in the
Scoping Plan. While the NTMP itself may, in fact, mitigate or
offset carbon emissions associated with timber harvesting, CDF
extrapolates this conclusion, without substantiation, across
its entire regulatory program. The Board of Forestry's (BOF)
2008 AB 32 Strategic Plan to ARB essentially reaches the same
conclusion, again, without any supporting evidence. This
raises the concern that CDF may not be in the best position to
complete the above assessment objectively.
2)Scoping Plan commitments : According to the Scoping Plan,
California's forests currently sequester approximately 5
million metric tons (MMT) of carbon dioxide annually. This
means that the atmospheric uptake and sequestration of carbon
from forest growth is greater than emissions from fires,
harvesting, land conversion, and decomposition. There were
significant limitations (e.g., temporal, spatial, and
methodological), however, to the study that formed the basis
for the above sequestration rate so ARB is planning on
updating its assessment by winter 2010. Nonetheless, the
Scoping Plan tasks CDF and BOF with evaluating how its current
regulations and programs will continue to achieve the 5 MMT
target by 2020 (Task #2). Since the conversion of timberland
AB 1504
Page 4
and forestland (a broader category) to non-timber and
non-forest land uses is one threat to the maintenance of this
target, the Scoping Plan also suggests that regulatory changes
could dissuade conversion or require mitigation for the lost
sequestration capacity. From 1999 to 2008, about 1,500 acres
of timberland per year have been converted to non-timber uses.
CDF is just beginning to determine how it will implement Task
#2. Possible options include a top-down approach, comparing
carbon inventory trends longitudinally and retrospectively
teasing out possible explanations for this trend, or a
risk-based approach, assessing the capacity of its rules or
programs to mitigate threats (e.g., wildfires, conversions) to
carbon stocks. There are many existing forest practice rules
that, on a project-by-project basis, may have the effect of
offsetting overall carbon emissions (e.g., streamside buffer
or retention rules) or contributing to emissions (e.g., rules
that permit the harvesting of old-growth or older trees).
However, these rules were not developed with carbon
sequestration in mind (and, in fact, may have been motivated
by other statutory requirements or court order) so the
challenge is to determine which rules have the incidental
benefit of increased carbon storage and whether new rules or
amendments are necessary to increase storage or mitigate
emissions in order to meet or maintain the Scoping Plan
target.
3)CEQA and carbon emissions : Pursuant to its responsibilities
under the California Environmental Quality Act, CDF is
requiring large landowners (greater than 50,000 acres) to
analyze the GHG impacts of their preferred timber harvest
management regimes across their entire ownership. These
landowners are currently required to demonstrate, through a
sustained yield plan (SYP), "maximum sustained production" of
high-quality timber products, balancing growth and harvest
over a 100-year planning horizon. A SYP describes a
landowner's management regime, and proposed growth and harvest
rates, and contains environmental analysis of this regime on a
programmatic scale.
CDF has stated that "if the GHG analysis is included as part
of the overall management regime for the ownership, individual
[timber harvest plans] will not be required to specifically
address GHG relationships other than to demonstrate
consistency with the management regime." CDF has also found
AB 1504
Page 5
that its "?review of approved [SYP] documents for larger
landowners in the state indicates that at the end of the
100-year planning horizon?the total inventory and growth will
exceed existing inventory and growth levels." Together with
the assertion that carbon post-harvest continues to be
sequestered in wood products or landfills and the assumption
that use of wood products displaces use of non-wood building
materials, CDF has concluded that, despite the lack of a
threshold of significance, the impacts of carbon emissions are
not significant and thus, no mitigation is necessary.
4)Forest and carbon : Forests both store and release carbon.
Through photosynthesis, carbon dioxide is absorbed from the
atmosphere and stored aboveground (in trees, understory
vegetation, lying dead wood, litter, duff) and belowground
(soil, roots). Older trees inherently store more carbon than
younger trees. Carbon stored in soils is large, stable pool,
accounting for 50-60 percent of total forest carbon in
temperate forests. When trees or understory plants die, some
carbon is stored as dead biomass or transformed to soil carbon
via decomposition. Soil carbon itself decomposes slowly and
can accumulate at high rates.
The above context illustrates the fact that forests are
biological systems, and as such are, according to Mark Harmon,
a professor of forest science at Oregon State University,
"leaky." Carbon comes into the system via photosynthesis but
goes out via respiration, decomposition, combustion, leaching,
and erosion. A leaky system can store carbon but the amount
it can store is dependent on the rate of input relative to the
rate of output. As an analogy, a bucket with leaks can store
water only if it receives a constant input; the larger the
leaks, the less water stored regardless of the rate of inflow.
A disturbance to this system, whether caused by humans or
nature, influences this carbon balance in several respects. A
wildfire, for example, directly releases carbon to the
atmosphere while also converting living biomass to dead
biomass. When trees are harvested, carbon (roughly 20-33
percent) is transferred to wood products, emitted from
decaying stumps and slash (branches, leaf litter, etc.), soil,
and combustion from burning the site or slash in preparation
for re-planting. Some carbon also remains on-site. A
disturbance temporarily (years to decades) reduces
photosynthesis given the time it takes to restore the
AB 1504
Page 6
photosynthetic capacity of forests. According to Mr. Harmon,
the effect of a disturbance depends on the frequency and
severity of the disturbance; more frequent disturbances remove
more carbon, storing less of it in forests, on average. In
effect, increasing the disturbance severity increases the size
of the leaks in the bucket.
5)Take-home principles : In testimony before Congress last year,
Dr. Harmon articulated a number of principles that he believes
should frame any analysis of carbon and forests:
a) All relevant carbon pools need to be included: in
other words, all possible sources (soil, dead biomass,
live plants) of leaks in the bucket should be considered;
related to this is changes in or transfers from these
pools for a total accounting.
b) Any analysis should specify the start and end points
or account for the baseline carbon when assessing the
impacts of a particular disturbance or project. An
afforestation project on marginal agricultural land will
store more carbon compared to the same project
established by converting an old-growth forest.
c) Actions to increase carbon stores can take decades
to have a positive effect. As mentioned above, it can
take decades for a forest to reach its full capacity.
d) From a carbon-perspective, forests are potentially
renewable if the regeneration rate equals the removal
rate. Removal of trees, of course, can affect carbon
pools other than trees and these can decline when trees
are harvested.
e) Forests systems have feedbacks which can strongly
influence the carbon balance. Increasing the growth rate
of trees can lead to high carbon stores but a larger tree
also means more plant material will die and decompose
(and release carbon). Also, if we are in fact
experiencing more frequent and severe fires, this
increase cannot happen indefinitely because more frequent
fires will eventually lower fuel loads.
f) Finally, one must examine the whole forest over
time, not a single point in time, when assessing a
AB 1504
Page 7
policy's carbon effects. While a young forest removes
more carbon in a course of a year than an older forest,
only comparing the relative sequestration rates for this
one year is misleading. When comparing the average
carbon stores of a
young and older forest, it is the latter forest that will
store more carbon.
6)Suggested amendment : The deadlines CDF must abide by when
preparing the assessment were inadvertently drafted one year
later than the author intended. The draft assessment should
be published by December 1, 2010; the final by March 1, 2011.
This amendment will be made in the Appropriations Committee.
7)Related legislation : SB 144 (Pavley), which has been referred
to this committee, requires CDF, among other things, to
develop options and incentives for the conservation and
management of private forest lands, establish scientific,
standardized carbon baselines to project future emission and
sequestration scenarios, and develop regulations to mitigate
the sequestration impacts of forestland conversions.
REGISTERED SUPPORT / OPPOSITION :
Support
Audubon California
California Council of Land Trusts
Cascade Action Now!
Central Sierra Environmental Resource Center
Defenders of Wildlife
Ebbetts Pass Forest Watch
Environmental Protection Information Center
Forest Ethics
Forests Forever
Natural Resources Defense Council
Pacific Forest Trust
Planning and Conservation League
Trust for Public Lands
Opposition
California Licensed Foresters Association
AB 1504
Page 8
Analysis Prepared by : Dan Chia / NAT. RES. / (916) 319-2092