Slash Storage: Carbon Vaults to Help Mitigate Near Term Wildfire and Climate Change Pressure

Over the past century, fire suppression and increased human settlement at the Wildland-Urban Interface (WUI) have led to dramatic increases in the risk and impact of catastrophic wildfires.1 Climate change contributes to the problem by increasing temperatures and aridity, and by reducing precipitation in fire prone regions.2 A 2016 study found that climate change doubled the cumulative forest fire area in the American West since 1984.3 The direct and indirect costs of wildfire include emergency firefighting costs, property losses, impairment to air and water quality, injuries and fatalities, healthcare costs, infrastructure shutdowns, and lost revenues. Architects working near the WUI are required by law to specify construction materials and create site plans with fire suppression and life safety in the context of severe wildfires in mind. Working successfully in the WUI demands that designers have a deeper understanding of the carbon cycling, land management practices, and funding obstacles connected to forest systems. This paper discusses the work of Yale University’s Carbon Containment Lab (CC Lab) to develop a building typology called the Carbon Vault, a low-cost, nature-based structure for storing carbon in woody biomass. Carbon vaults address the need to reduce and contain wood fuel in forests that are prone to severe wildfire. A fire-resistant form of Dowel Laminated Timber (DLT) mass timber, called Residual DLT, is presented in this paper as a construction material for carbon vaults in the WUI. Residual DLT addresses the wood waste of forest land management practices, especially those in forests prone to severe fire, by creating an opportunity to engage carbon offset markets.