• Rogers, Nicole S.
  School of Forestry, University of Maine
  

As atmospheric carbon continues to rise and U.S. fossil fuel use moves beyond 2000 million metric tons per year, the importance of carbon mitigation and fossil fuel offset grows. A mixture of spruce-fir and mixed hardwood forests cover the northeast landscape and have great potential to reduce atmospheric carbon through a combination of forest sequestration and biofuel creation from woody biomass. Through analysis of the US Forest Service’s data, Forest Inventory Analysis, the current northeast forests were assessed for carbon storage, annual carbon increment, and average harvesting patterns. With use of the statistical computing program R and analysis of forest data, this study suggests northeast forests have yet to reach their carbon storage peak, while biofuel creation requires increased efficiency to make a larger impact on fossil fuel offsets.