Informed estimates of the impacts of changing climatic conditions
on forest growth are of great importance to carbon offset project
development. To have value, forest carbon offset projects must
sequester more carbon than business-as-usual (additionality) and
maintain the carbon stock for some required period of time (permanence).
Forest carbon accounting protocols, such as the one
used by the Climate Action Reserve (2010), require baselineprojections of the business-as-usual condition against which additionality
is quantified. The majority of the growth-and-yield
models do not account for the effects of changing climate on forest
growth, potentially leading to an incorrect estimate of the future
baseline condition. Incorrect baseline estimates detract from the
economic viability of a project if carbon stock difference between
the baseline condition and the project is reduced to the point that
the project value is insufficient to cover the cost of investment.