Progress 01/15/24 to 01/14/25
Outputs
Target Audience:We have published an extension publication about carbon programs available to Virginia landowners. Although we do not have the numbers on how many people have read the publication, we have received great feed back from landowners, extension agents, academics (the publication is being used in class with undergrads, for example). We have also been in communication with our landowners through our extension services about the project. The forestlandowner summer 2024 newsletter was sent to over 2000 landowners in our mail database. Changes/Problems:We will request a one-year no cost extension due to delays in our project as described last year (maternity leave of project director, delay in recuriting PhD student). The recurited PhD student has gone through the first of academic training which she needed to better acomplish wrapping up the survey instrument. Also, we need more time trying to engage underserved landowners to participate in the project. What opportunities for training and professional development has the project provided?This past year, we graduated 2 masters students (one in forest economics and one studying the trade-offs between water and carbon production), we have supported a PhD student in forest economics (who will be fully supported by the project and be working on specific objectives 1 and 2 with the project director for her dissertation) and have supported one semester of another PhD student in forest economics (who has assisted with the development of the payments for carbon and water stacking model and simulation). How have the results been disseminated to communities of interest?We have published an extension publication through the Virginia Cooperative Extension services on carbon programas in Virginia, which we will be reviewing and updating soon. We have also shared more information about these programs and about out project with Virginia woodland owners who are on the list of our extension service (2000+) through the 2024 summer newsletter. Preliminary results on the tradeoff between water production and carbon sequestration have been presented at theAmerican Geophysical Conference 2024 Annual Meeting and the 2024 Virginia Tech Water Research Colloquium. What do you plan to do during the next reporting period to accomplish the goals?For specific objectives 1 and 2, we will be finalizing the survey instrument and framed field experiment protocol to get it approved by IRB by April 2024, when we will retake communicating with landowners to run the field work in the summer (july and august).Regarding specific objective 3, water and carbon tradeoff model refinement continues, and these relationships will be further explored by forest cover type and spatial scale this year. The team will continue to meet periodically as has been happening to connect the human and physical aspects of our work so we can produce a summary analysis by the end of the projecy addressing all three sepcific objectives.
Impacts
What was accomplished under these goals?
As mentioned in last year's report, due to delays in the recruiting process for the forest economics PhD student carrying out the surveys and assisting with the framed field experiments, we are in the planning stages fro carrying out these two methodologies in the field. However, the PhD student has been through her first year of academic trainning now and is able to carry out field work this summer with the project director so that we can achieve specific objectives 1 and 2. We do have a list of landowners that have volunteered to participate in the project and a list of randmly selected forest landholdings we will be approaching to carry out out surveys. Efforts have been made to reach out to minority landowners, but our ability to get them involved is a bit questionable right now. Moreover, we have constinuously been working in the survey and other data collection instruments we will be implementing this summer. In the meantime, this past year,the economists in the project and a PhD student who spent a semester with us and a masters studenthave worked on understanding from a theoretical perspective the relationship between the production of carbon sequestration and water quantity as ecosystem services by forest landownersas well as the potential for payments for both services (what we call payments for ecosystems services stacking), which is related to specific objective 3. We now have a theoretical model and simulation we will be refining in the next couple of months so we can present and get feedback in conferences this summer. In a nutshell, preliminary results show that in phiographic regions and forest types where there is a tradeoff between water production and carbon sequestration (for example, when increasing carbon sequestration means a reduction in water yield or availability for human consumption), water and carbon payments (either through public policy or markets) not only would increase the value of land but could also serve as a means to manage water scarcity in places where it exist with carbon programs. The economists of the project havebeen working closely with the hydrologists and soil scientists in the project team to understand and connect their work, which also relates to specific objective 3. Accomplishments related to understanding thetrade-offs between carbon sequestration and water production (yield) include:(1) Data has been procured for both carbon and estimated evapotranspiration (ET) for forested areas that span the state of Virginia from years 2015 - 2020; and (2)We have constructed models of forest carbon and ET, and preliminary results suggest different magnitudes of tradeoffs by physiographic region. Preliminary results have been shown at theAmerican Geophysical Conference 2024 Annual Meeting and the 2024 Virginia Tech Water Research Colloquium.
Publications
- Type:
Other
Status:
Published
Year Published:
2024
Citation:
Schons, S.Z., Kurt, S., Gagnon, J. (2024). An Overview of Forest Carbon Credit Programs in Virginia. Virginia Cooperative Extension. CNRE-177P.
- Type:
Conference Papers and Presentations
Status:
Other
Year Published:
2024
Citation:
Finks, L., Mclaughlin, D., Strahm, B., Thomas, V., Shao, Y. (2024). Digging Deeper than Climate: Controls on Runoff Generation Across the Southern Appalachian Region. Poster presentation at the American Geophysical Conference 2024 Annual Meeting, December 12, Washington DC.
- Type:
Conference Papers and Presentations
Status:
Other
Year Published:
2024
Citation:
Finks, L., Gagnon, J.P, Flanagan, L. (2024). Digging Deeper than Climate: Controls on Runoff Generation Across the Southern Appalachian Region. Presentation at the American Geophysical Conference 2024 Annual Meeting, December 12, Washington DC.
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Progress 01/15/23 to 01/14/24
Outputs
Target Audience:In an extension workshop lead by one of the co-directors in the project about forest carbon programs in Virginia in which we presented a forest carbon project framework for landowners and others with interest in forest carbon programs, we had 90 people in person and 192 online. Most of them were landowners and representatives from institutions such as the VDOF, among others. Changes/Problems:We have delayed the IRB process for two reasons: the main student we spent a long time trying to recruit decided last minute not to attend our program; the project director was away on maternity leave in the fall of 2023. This might entail a request for one year extension of the project in the future. What opportunities for training and professional development has the project provided?We have recruited and started twoMS students, Caio Gomes (goal 1, forest economics) and Lindsay Finks (goal 2, forest soils and hydrology). How have the results been disseminated to communities of interest?We have disseminated a " forest carbon framework" to landowners and others interested in forest carbon programs in Virginia during an extension workshop held by othe co-directors in March 2023. In this document, we provide information on the different programs available or soon to be available to forest landowners in the state that we gathered through interviews with programdevelopers. What do you plan to do during the next reporting period to accomplish the goals?In the second year of project we expect to finish designing the framed field experiments and getting it approved by VT's Institutional Review Board (IRB). We expect to implement the experiments in the summer of 2024. A new student has been recruited to work with Caio in this effort. We also expect to develop independent evapotranspiration and carbon models for the full suite of parcels within the next 6-9 months (specific objetive 3).
Impacts
What was accomplished under these goals?
We have worked with the Conservation Management Institute (CMI) to identify landowner parcels and get the associated shapefiles.We have alsorandomly sampled landowner shapefiles from across physiographic and cover type strata. The sampled landowner shapefiles have been the primary subset of data that we have been using for the development of evapotranspiration and carbon sequestraion models (specific objective 3). The overallmodel'srefinement and application is ongoing. We have concentrated efforts in further understanding the current state of forest carbon programs and their contract design as we started designing the framed field experiments .
Publications
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