Estimating the Climate Benefits of High-Conservation-Value Forests

Naturarvet is a non-profit organization dedicated to conserving biodiversity by acquiring and permanently protecting valuable forest areas. Through donations from individuals, companies, and foundations, Naturarvet safeguards forests with high conservation value from logging and ensures that they can continue to develop naturally for future generations.

The organization's work contributes to protecting endangered species, strengthening ecosystems, and preserving natural heritage for future generations.

Naturarvet has previously carried out high-level estimates of the climate benefits provided by its forests using generalized values from scientific literature. While these estimates provide an overall picture of climate benefits, they do not account for differences between individual forest properties. At the same time, scientific understanding of carbon storage and carbon sequestration in mature forests has advanced in recent years, raising the question of how new research can be used to improve and further develop existing estimation methods.

The goal is not to develop advanced research models requiring specialist expertise, but rather to create a methodological framework that can be used operationally within the organization. For example, the resulting method should enable Naturarvet to estimate the climate benefits of a newly acquired forest or communicate how much carbon is stored or sequestered within a protected forest area.

A key challenge in the project is determining whether it is possible to develop a method that provides more reliable estimates than today's generalized assumptions while remaining sufficiently simple to be used by people without specialized expertise in forest ecology. Naturarvet has access to ecological expertise through dedicated volunteers and collaborators who can contribute knowledge throughout the development process, but the ambition is for the final method to be usable independently by the organization's board members and staff.

In this project, you will investigate which factors have the greatest influence on carbon storage and carbon sequestration in forests with high conservation value and how these factors can be translated into a practical estimation tool for Naturarvet.

The work may include literature reviews, analysis of existing methods and models, and evaluation of the types of information typically available about forest properties and how variations in data availability affect the accuracy of climate-benefit estimates. Based on these findings, you will develop a proposed method or model that makes it possible to estimate the climate benefits of different forest types without requiring extensive field inventories or advanced expert assessments.

The project may also include an analysis of how uncertainties should be handled and communicated, as well as how the results can be presented in a clear and pedagogical way to donors, companies, and other stakeholders.

Possible research questions:

• How do different forest characteristics affect carbon storage and carbon sequestration in forests with high conservation value?
• What information is needed to estimate a forest's climate benefits with a reasonable degree of reliability?
• Is it possible to develop a method that provides more accurate estimates than generalized default values while remaining practical and easy to use?
• How can the climate benefits of a protected forest or a specific forest area be communicated in a clear and scientifically grounded manner?