Forests and wood products play a positive role in helping to reduce the effect of climate change. The role of growing trees in storing carbon is well known, but did you know that many wood products also store a high proportion of carbon for the long term?

Forests NSW is a leading researcher into carbon in forests – how carbon is stored in timber products and the effect of increasing carbon dioxide concentration on forests.

Grow, harvest, store

Forest timber is part of the climate change solution. Carbon is stored by the growing tree and remains locked up in the resulting wood products, so forest timber helps to reduce the effect of climate change even after the timber leaves the forest.

• Find out more about how carbon is stored in forests.
• Find out more about the carbon locked up in forest timber (Bush Telegraph, Spring/Summer 2008).

Facts

Forest timber – part of the climate change solution:

• Carbon is stored in trees and the wood products they become after harvesting.
• Growing trees absorb carbon dioxide from the atmosphere through photosynthesis and store the carbon in roots, trunks and branches.
• About half the dry weight of a tree or wood product is carbon, with one tonne of carbon representing 3.67 tonnes of carbon dioxide.
• More than 4 million tonnes of carbon are sequestered or stored in Forests NSW plantations.
• Carbon is stored in wood products – when the products are in use and after disposal in landfill.
• Forests products in use (tables, house frames etc.) store 100 million tonnes of carbon, equivalent to 65% of Australia's annual greenhouse gas emissions.
• Forest products in landfill store 140 million tonnes of carbon, equivalent to more than 90% of Australia's annual greenhouse gas emissions.
• Compared to other building products (steel, aluminum etc.) the production of forest products leaves a very small carbon footprint.

Find out more ...

• Sustainable forest management
• Carbon storage
• Carbon accounting and trading
• Effect of climate change on forests

Online tools

Online tools can be downloaded from our website to help you:

• track the life cycle of carbon - see TimberCAM
• find out more about carbon sequestration or storage - see the Carbon sequestration predictor.

Download

Download the following Primefact:

• Forests, timber and climate change