America’s Revegetation And Carbon Sequestration Act Of 2023 - Fall

Team Members: Nicholas Britton, Amanda Biscoe, Rebecca Barel, Vrinda Goenka, Benjamin Greenstein, Brooke Harrison, Daniel Cassara, Fei (Yifei) He, John Watters, Nadine Palmowski, Tianyi Wang

This report evaluates the America’s Revegetation and Carbon Sequestration (ARCS) Act of 2023, a legislative proposal designed to address deforestation and forest degradation across the United States through large-scale revegetation and forest restoration initiatives. U.S. forests cover approximately 750 million acres and play a critical role in climate mitigation by removing and storing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. However, climate change, wildfires, invasive species, and extreme weather events have significantly reduced forests’ carbon sequestration capacity and ecological resilience. The report focuses on two key provisions of the ARCS Act: the creation of a national revegetation strategy for federal forests and the development of coordinated recovery plans following stand-replacing disturbances such as severe wildfires.

The report outlines the first two years of program planning following enactment of the legislation. Proposed actions include the creation of an assessment tool to identify federal forests most in need of revegetation, the establishment of an interagency task force to coordinate restoration efforts across federal and non-federal partners, and the development of planning teams responsible for post-disturbance recovery strategies. These efforts aim to restore degraded ecosystems, enhance biodiversity, and increase carbon storage capacity across the western United States. The program is projected to require approximately $39 million annually and additional staffing across federal agencies to support implementation. By strengthening forest resilience and supporting large-scale restoration, the ARCS Act seeks to mitigate climate change impacts while preserving critical ecosystem services and supporting the long-term health of U.S. forest landscapes.

Learn more about the MPA-ESP Workshop in Applied Earth Systems Management.