BILL ANALYSIS
AB 1504
Page 1
ASSEMBLY THIRD READING
AB 1504 (Skinner)
As Amended January 13, 2010
Majority vote
NATURAL RESOURCES 6-2 APPROPRIATIONS 12-5
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|Ayes:|Skinner, Brownley, |Ayes:|De Leon, Ammiano, |
| |Chesbro, | |Bradford, Charles |
| |De Leon, Hill, Huffman | |Calderon, Coto, Davis, |
| | | |Fuentes, Hall, John A. |
| | | |Perez, Skinner, Solorio, |
| | | |Torlakson |
| | | | |
|-----+--------------------------+-----+--------------------------|
|Nays:|Gilmore, Knight |Nays:|Conway, Harkey, Miller, |
| | | |Nielsen Audra Strickland |
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SUMMARY : Requires the California Department of Forestry and
Fire Protection (CDF, or CALFIRE), in consultation with the Air
Resources Board (ARB), by March 1, 2011, 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).
Specifically, this bill :
1)By March 1, 2011, 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 GHG reduction goals. At a minimum, CDF must consider:
a) Whether relevant statutory or regulatory requirements
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
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and carbon emissions associated with the non-timber use;
and,
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, 2010, 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.
6)Is contingent upon receipt of sufficient funding from the ARB
pursuant to its AB 32 fee revenue authority or any other
public or private source.
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
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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 : According to the Assembly Appropriations
Committee, moderate one-time special-fund costs during 2009-10
and 2010-11, in the range of $200,000 to $400,000, to the extent
funding is available. This measure is contingent upon CDF's
receipt of funds sufficient to cover the costs of the assessment
from the ARB's AB 32 fee revenue or from another public or
private source. CDF has indicated that costs would be
absorbable given its commitment to the Interagency Forestry
Working Group to prepare the assessment (see below).
COMMENTS :
1)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 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
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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)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 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
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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 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)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
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)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 a large, stable pool, accounting for 50-60%
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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%) 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 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)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
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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; and,
f)Finally, one must examine the whole forest over time, not a
single point in time, when assessing a 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.
1)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.
Analysis Prepared by : Dan Chia / NAT. RES. / (916) 319-2092
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