Studies Show Serious Doubts On Forests As Carbon Sinks

[hatrack]

OTTAWA—"Striking findings are
emerging from research at the world's
largest open-air climate-change
experiment that will prove troubling to
Canada's policy-makers and challenging
for scientists.

The results strongly suggest that Canada's forests won't be able to soak up
anywhere near as much excess carbon dioxide as the federal Kyoto action plan
assumes.

By 2008, roughly one-sixth of Canada's Kyoto target reduction in carbon
dioxide emissions annually is supposed to come from these forest and farmland
"sinks." Federal officials have never made public the detailed studies to support
that estimate.

EDIT

The 10-year, $18 million experiment, begun in 1998, involves exposing forest
stands to controlled levels of carbon dioxide and ozone, the main constituent of
urban smog. The chief species studied, the poplar, is the most widespread tree
in Canada, covering an estimated 16 million hectares of forest. But poplars growing
in the carbon dioxide levels forecast for mid-century in North America falter at soaking
up the gas when also exposed to concentrations of ground-level ozone already common across
southern Ontario and parts of the Canada, U.S. researchers found."

EDIT



Toronto Star

[pansypoo53219]

1. my cousin

a PHd is atmospheric chemistry, showed that as the greenhouse effect increases the trees will produce C02 with oxigen(as the trees decompose). once it gets really ramped up-whoa nelly. we need to get rid of the chimperor toot suite.

[Sinistrous]

2. Forests have a huge environmental benefit, but ,,,

if you want to sequester carbon, plant oysters.

[pinkpops]

3. eggsplain

[Sinistrous]

4. Simple.

Oyster shells are calcium carbonate. The carbonate radical permanently locks up CO-2.

[seekerofwisdom]

5. maybe age has something to do with it

Old growth forests are much more adept at soaking up CO2 and expelling O2. New growth forests (first 10yrs of growth) are actually respiring more CO2 than )2.

Until the equilibrium of respiration is reached later in a tree's growth cycle, the net uptake and use of CO2 as opposed to output of O2 will have an effect on calculations of greenhouse gases.

Its one message that came out of the South American meeting a few years back. New growth forests, planted as CO2 sinsk, will take 10 years before a benefit is seen.

[Kolesar]

6. I did not know that! I guess you are a "provider of wisdom" for today

Welcome to the Underground! :hi:

[NNadir]

7. It is still very important to plant and preserve trees.

That first ten years is followed by decades in which trees sequester huge amounts of carbon. Trees also are effective cleansers of many other pollutants, including nitrogen dioxide.

Trees will not solve the greenhouse effect by themselves, but they should be an important part of the equation.

Note that the original report posted does not say that trees do not sequester carbon dioxide, only that they do not sequester as much as is hoped.

Finally, we could always reduce ozone by reducing the use of highly polluting fuels, in particular fossil fuels.

Another surprisingly untried process would be irradiate air in the trophosphere to create the same conditions that exist in the stratosphere when UV radiation cleaves chlorine from chlorfluorocarbons. This would have the added benefit of destroying some of the potent greenhouse gases represented by persistent chlorofluorocarbons, help protect stratospheric ozone, and reduce ozone at ground level.