Climate's smoke signals.

Byline: CHRISTIAN WIHTOL Register-Guard Business Editor

TIMBER companies that own the nearly 6 million acres of industrial forestland in Oregon pursue a rigorous logging regimen that goes something like this:

Plant Douglas fir seedlings in a big clear-cut, thin the stand a couple of times during the next 40 years, then clear-cut the land and plant new seedlings.

But Zach Willey, an economist with the advocacy group Environmental Defense, said the nation in coming years may try to encourage forest owners to reduce clear-cut logging, do selective thinning, and let big trees grow much bigger as a way to store carbon dioxide.

By absorbing carbon dioxide and turning it into wood fiber, U.S. forests play a huge role in the world's carbon cycle. By removing carbon from the atmosphere, forests help offset the release of carbon dioxide from cars and power plants.

As elected officials grow more worried about the buildup of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases in the atmosphere - and the global warming that results - they'll seek ways to store more carbon in solid form, Willey said.

"People are going to have to think rationally about what is a cost-effective way to offset greenhouse gas emissions," he said. Paying forest owners to shift to longer logging rotations "will be part of a least-cost mix of greenhouse gas mitigation strategies," he said.

Other steps will focus on cutting emissions by, for example, increasing the energy efficiency of cars or industrial plants, Willey said.

Eventually - the timing depends on the White House and Congress - the United States will require sources of carbon dioxide emissions to pay for ways to absorb carbon, he said.

That could involve, for example, an emissions levy on cars, with the receipts going to pay forestland owners to postpone logging, he said.

The tricky part is ensuring a net increase in carbon storage, Willey said. With forestlands, that means making sure that if one company agrees not to log trees, another company elsewhere doesn't accelerate logging to take up the market slack, he said.

The 1997 Kyoto treaty on global warming calls that problem "leakage," and no one has found a solution, he said.

Some big carbon dioxide emitters have launched pilot projects with Environmental Defense. New Orleans-based power company Entergy Inc. has allocated $25 million through 2005 to pay for carbon storage tests.

They include planting 80 acres of oak and pecan trees in a Louisiana marsh and working with Midwest farmers to find alternatives to plowing grasslands. Plowing kills the grass, and when the roots decompose, they release carbon dioxide.

Clear-cut logging is similar, removing trees that absorb carbon and prompting their stumps and roots to rot and release carbon, Willey said. But thinning that leaves healthy trees standing can increase carbon absorption by spurring tree growth, he said.

Other companies working on carbon storage include oil giant Shell International and aluminum producer Alcoa.

Those firms want to develop expertise so they will be ahead of rivals when carbon storage becomes mandatory, Willey said.

"They think that sooner or later this is going to become a matter of law in the United States, despite the Bush administration's hands-off approach," he said.

Bob Prolman, director of international environmental affairs for Weyerhaeuser Co., said Britain has already implemented mandatory carbon storage, as will several other nations in coming months, all of them seeking to comply with the Kyoto treaty.

Prolman, whose company, based in Federal Way, Wash., is the largest private timberland owner in Oregon with 1.2 million acres, figures the United States will create such a system within a few years.

But he doesn't believe paying timberland owners to switch to longer harvest rotations is the answer.

It's more cost-effective to plant new forests where none previously existed, or to buy energy-efficient equipment that reduces carbon emissions, he said.

The Kyoto treaty defines a new forest as one that is planted on land where no forest has existed for 50 years, Prolman said. Weyerhaeuser is doing just that in a business venture with the government of Uruguay in South America, Prolman said.

The company is planting loblolly pine on about 200,000 acres that has been barren for centuries, he said.

He predicted that carbon storage "is something that all industry will be facing down the road."