(AP) Maine group: Forest zone would slow climate change

[OKIsItJustMe]

http://www.seacoastonline.com/articles/20090217-NEWS-90217041

Maine group: Forest zone would slow climate change

By Associated Press
February 17, 2009 4:51 PM

PORTLAND, Maine — Millions of acres of the state's woods would be designated as a special forest zone in order to draw more pollution from the air and slow the impact of climate change under a campaign proposed Tuesday by a Maine environmental group.

Jonathan Carter, director of the Forest Ecology Network, said he hopes such a designation would be the first step toward a national effort to mitigate the effects of what he called the "climate disaster" of global warming.

The thrust of the plan is to encourage landowners to manage their forests in a way that would maximize how much carbon would be drawn out of the air to counteract the pollution that is put into the air from power plants, vehicles and other sources, Carter said.

His proposal would use federal funds to pay landowners to manage their lands using specified forestry practices. Foresters recommend eliminating clear-cutting, using methods that don't cause erosion and chopping down old and dead trees.

…

[aquart]

1. Everybody plant a tree?

[OKIsItJustMe]

2. And cut down old, dead ones

maybe even use 'em to make "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biochar">biochar.'"

[XemaSab]

3. Clear-cutting can be better for the forest than selective cutting

The disadvantage with a selective cut is that you have to keep a road network open long-term.

With a small clearcut, you can build a cheap road, and then decommission it after the harvest is finished.

[OKIsItJustMe]

4. I'm not as confident…

http://www.nature.com/news/2008/080910/full/news.2008.1092.html

Published online 10 September 2008 | Nature | doi:10.1038/news.2008.1092

News

Old forests capture plenty of carbon

Planting a new tree may be a less effective way to sequester carbon than saving an old tree from the axe.

Emma Marris

…

Now Sebastiaan Luyssaert of the University of Antwerp, Belgium, and his colleagues have taken advantage of all this new data to produce a meta-analysis of studies that monitored 519 plots of temperate and boreal forest between 15 and 800 years of age. Their conclusion, published in Nature this week, is that old-growth forests are, in general, still absorbing carbon. Primary boreal and temperate forests, which make up 15% of global forests, sequester about 1.3 gigatonnes of carbon a year, give or take half a gigatonne. That amounts to about 10% of the global net ecosystem productivity, which was previously accounted for elsewhere].

Dying dogma

The conclusion makes sense, according to Susan Ustin, a plant ecologist at the University of California, Davis. When determining the age of a tree, one counts its rings. Each of those rings represents the transformation of atmospheric carbon into the living tissue of the tree. In any one year, the death and decomposition of roots or branches may outweigh the carbon sequestered in the trunk - but over time, any significant growth must involve net carbon uptake. "If they are carbon neutral at 400 years old, how are they going to make it to 1,000?" she asks. "If it was really carbon neutral, the trees would die."

…

The implications are many. Scientists who were assuming that old-growth was carbon neutral may have consequently been overestimating sequestration in other ecosystems. Climate models may have to be re-examined. And policies that give credits to governments or companies for sequestering carbon may want to incorporate the protection of old-growth forests into their menu of options.

Indeed, the heartwarmingly green action of planting a tree may actually be second-best to keeping an old tree from the axe: "probably for a couple hundred years, until the young one got big enough to have the same amount of carbon as one of these old trees,"

…

Article here: http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/nature07276


OSU "Media Release" Follows:http://oregonstate.edu/dept/ncs/newsarch/2008/Sep08/oldgrowthcarbon.html

9-10-08
Media Release

Old Growth Forests Are Valuable Carbon Sinks

CORVALLIS, Ore. – Contrary to 40 years of conventional wisdom, a new analysis to be published Friday in the journal Nature suggests that old growth forests are usually “carbon sinks” – they continue to absorb carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and mitigate climate change for centuries.

…

When an old growth forest is harvested, Law said, studies show that there’s a new input of carbon to the atmosphere for about five to 20 years, before the growing young trees begin to absorb and sequester more carbon than they give off. The creation of new forests, whether naturally or by humans, is often associated with disturbance to soil and the previous vegetation, resulting in decomposition that exceeds for some period the net primary productivity of re-growth.

…

One implication of the study, Law said, is that nations with significant amounts of old forests may find it somewhat easier to offset greenhouse gas emissions if those forests are left intact. It will also be necessary, she said, for land surface models that attempt to define carbon balance to better characterize function of old forests.

…

[eShirl]

5. how big is a small clearcut?

[XemaSab]

6. Depends on who you ask

;)