An Updated Meta-Analysis of Thinning and Clearcutting Impacts on Carbon Storage in North American Forests
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2026-03-25
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Abstract
Working forests serve an important role in providing timber products. At the same time, these forests are expected to contribute to mitigating climate change through carbon sequestration (removing carbon from the atmosphere) and by replacing high-emission fuel products, while providing wildlife habitat and other ecosystem services. Understanding the trade-off between increasing timber harvest activities and carbon stock is pivotal for sustainable forest management.
Previous meta-analyses have produced mixed results regarding timber harvest effects on soil carbon. With new studies being published, the authors performed an updated meta-analysis to synthesize the effects of forest thinning and clearcutting on three carbon pools—plants and roots, organic layer, and mineral soil—as well as examine how these effects interact with thinning intensity and time since harvest.
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Bai, Jin, Katie Warnell, Michelle Talal, Sara Mason, Taylor Ricketts, Madison Wurst, Jennifer Jung, Lucie Talikoff, et al. (2026). An Updated Meta-Analysis of Thinning and Clearcutting Impacts on Carbon Storage in North American Forests. Retrieved from https://hdl.handle.net/10161/34401.
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Katie Warnell
Katie Warnell is a senior policy associate for the Ecosystem Services Program. She is a graduate of Duke University’s Master of Environment Management program with a concentration in ecosystem science and conservation and was awarded a geospatial analysis certificate. She has served as an intern at the Triangle Land Conservancy and as a research tech with the Duke University Superfund Research Center. She has conducted research on South Africa’s bats with the Organization for Tropical Studies and was involved in a DukeEngage project on fish farming in Ecuador.
Sara Mason
Sara Mason joined the Ecosystem Services Program at the Nicholas Institute for Energy, Environment & Sustainability as a policy associate after graduating from Duke with a master’s degree in environmental management. Her work focuses on the interdisciplinary nature of biodiversity conservation and how that can be leveraged to engage the public and policy makers in conservation efforts. Prior to joining the Nicholas Institute, Sara worked in ecological field research and endangered animal rehabilitation.
Lydia Olander
Lydia Olander is a program director at the Nicholas Institute for Energy Environment & Sustainability at Duke University and adjunct professor at the Nicholas School of the Environment. She works on improving evidence-based policy and accelerating implementation of climate resilience, nature-based solutions, natural capital accounting, and environmental markets. She leads the National Ecosystem Services Partnership and sits on Duke’s Climate Commitment action team. She recently spent two years with the Biden administration at the Council on Environmental Quality as Director of Nature based Resilience and before that spent five years on the Environmental Advisory Board for the US Army Corps of Engineers. She is a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) and widely published researcher. Prior to joining the Nicholas Institute, she spent a year as an AAAS Congressional Science and Technology Fellow working with Senator Joseph Lieberman on environmental and energy issues. She was a college scholar at Cornell University and earned her Master of Forest Science from Yale University and Ph.D. from Stanford University.
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