Assessment of Sustainable Biomass through Forest Restoration

Sustainable biomass from forest restoration to reduce high fuel loads and fire risk is a potentially significant source of bioenergy with numerous potential benefits including increased ecosystem services such as improved flow regimes for aquatic habitat. However, additional planning and decision support tools are need to assure economic and environmental sustainability. A multi-agency collaboration between DOE and USFS is using high-resolution spatial vegetation characteristics data to develop accurate estimates of sustainable forest biomass along with distributed hydrological, ecological, and wildfire risk modeling in a multi-objective analysis framework to assess the extent of forest thinning activities that restore landscape function to reduce high fuel loads while increasing biomass yield and streamflow in a publically and ecologically acceptable manner. We are initially focused on high fire risk areas in the Pacific Northwest at the sub-basin to regional scale using data, models, and analysis techniques that can be applied nationally. Initial results demonstrate the potential of forest restoration to provide sustainable biomass for energy considering cost, wildfire mitigation, and improved streamflow.