Family Forest Owners in the Redwood Region: Management Priorities and Opportunities in a Carbon Market.

California's cap-and-trade carbon market has included forest offset projects, available to all private landowners across the United States. The redwood region has been at the forefront of the market, creating the earliest forest carbon projects. From carbon registries, we compiled a database of all forest carbon projects in the market, in order to determine where projects were located, what types of landowners (e.g. industrial, non-industrial, tribal, timber investment management organizations [TIMO]) were participating, and how projects were being developed. Notably, non-industrial private forest landowners or "family" forest landowners were underrepresented within the market relative to their landholdings. We conducted a survey of family forest landowners in several forested regions across California, in order to determine landowner management objectives and willingness to participate in the carbon market, including obstacles and incentives for participation, and how carbon markets coexist with management objectives. We found that, though many of the carbon market objectives align well with family forest landowner objectives, the burdens of entering the market discourage participation. Further, using cluster analysis, we grouped family forest owners in California according to three management objective types, which we labeled Amenity, Legacy, and Income groups. These three groups had different views of the carbon market and climate change. If family forest owners are to be included in this or other carbonsequestration incentive programs, the management motivations and constraints of distinct landowner types need to be considered. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]