Traditional forest management utilizes two methods; slash and burn and thinning.

Slash and Burn

Thinning the Forest

The objective is to remove a buildup of volatile fuels.  If left unmanaged, nature will take care of the situation through massive forest fires.  This results in the total loss of prime forest lands and a significant increase in greenhouse gases. A recent example of this is the fires that burned 321,833 hectares of forest in Yellowstone in 1988.

The benefits of forest management can be seen in the two simulations below:

The US Forest Sevice burned over 100 million tons of forest fuels in 2008 as part of their forest management plan.  Currently burning is the best tradeoff since wildfires would produce vastly more greenhouse gasses than treatment burns.

• Replace "Slash and Burn" with biochar and bio-oil production
• Significantly reduce greenhouse gas production through elimintion of treatment burns
• Produce energy in the form of bio-oil
• Produce biochar to be used as a soil amendment
• Carbon negative instead of carbon positive; carbon is locked into the soil
• Reduce the amount of fertilizer required to produce crops
• Reduce the amount of water required to produce crops
• Greater crop yeild
• Boost local economies in rural areas through jobs in the biochar industry

Clearly, this is a win-win-win solution!