LAUSR

Soimakallio et al. (2022) reviewed literature to draw leveraged conclusions on how forest carbon balances are affected when “tree harvest rates are increased compared to a reference.” They condensed a large set of forest development scenarios into a ratio of changes in C stocks and harvests (H), that is, ΔC/ΔH calculated between scenarios. When both the numerator and denominator were expressed in tonnes of C, the division produced a dimensionless carbon balance indicator, CBI(T), as a function of time T. The resulting values were instructed to be interpreted as follows: “A positive CBI(T) value means that the forest carbon balance is reduced (i.e., less carbon is stored in the forest) when the harvest rate is increased. A CBI(T) value of one implies that the forest carbon stock is reduced by exactly the amount of carbon that is harvested,” and reasoned how the CBI should differ from one for different time horizons. This hypothesized behavior of the CBI may have oversteered the analyses, leading to the following choices, but altogether neglecting the question of whether all the contexts studied could be characterized by a simple indicator alone: