06/23/01 -- Forest Carbon Sinks Buy Time, But Will Not Prevent Climate Change

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FOREST CONSERVATION NEWS TODAY

Forest Carbon Sinks Buy Time, But Will Not Prevent Climate Change

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Forest Networking a Project of Forests.org, Inc.

http://forests.org/ -- Forest Conservation Portal

http://www.climateark.org/ -- Climate Ark - Climate Change Portal

06/23/01

OVERVIEW & COMMENTARY by Forests.org

Bottom line on suggestions that forest carbon sinks be used as a

primary means to fight climate change: it will buy some time, but is

no panacea. Effective climate change policy responses must focus

upon immediate massive reductions in greenhouse gas emissions and

widespread adoption of renewable energy sources.

This summarizes rather coarsely the findings and implications of a

series of recent scientific studies; including the most recent which

indicates that forest regrowth in the United States and China is

removing appreciable carbon from the atmosphere (though significantly

less than initially claimed). However, as these forests mature the

rate of carbon absorption will decline. Overly intensive forest

management as currently practiced will return much of the carbon to

the atmosphere. To hold out carbon sinks as some sort of climate

change panacea is delusional and fritters away the last remaining

time and opportunity to implement policies that will make a

difference in avoiding, and/or mitigating, the severity of looming

climate change.

Consideration of carbon sinks for climate change mitigation has

placed too much emphasis upon plantation forestry. The impermanent

nature of carbon sequestration through plantation forestry, and

questionable net benefits in terms of long-term carbon storage, is

becoming apparent. This is particularly true if old growth forests

(and their soils) - more dependable long-term holders of carbon - are

deforested for their establishment.

The emphasis in regards to the relationship between forest

conservation and climate change mitigation should be upon maintaining

existing old-growth forests and their massive carbon stores, and

establishing new forest ecosystems for long-term carbon storage. The

best manner to establish new significant and long-lasting forest

based carbon sinks is to allow regenerating forests to regain late

successional characteristics and eventual old growth status. Massive

regional ecological restoration efforts to aid and abet regeneration

of old-growth forest landscapes where they historically occurred

would be the only "carbon sink" of significance ecologically.

Anything less that forest restoration of new and permanent forests

does little more than enable continued gluttonous over consumption

based upon unsustainable use of fossil fuels, while putting off

changing our societal bad energy habits. Additional benefits in

terms of water quality, biodiversity conservation, wildlife habitat,

soil retention, recreational opportunities, etc. would be

substantial.

Ecologically benign and small-scaled eco-forestry activities could be

consistent with long-term reestablishment of terrestrial habitats

that bind carbon long-term. But no commercial scaled forest

harvesting - certified or not - should be allowed in these "forest

restoration carbon sinks".

A scientific based climate change policy that is to have a reasonable

chance of success should focus with urgency upon: 1) multi-lateral

launching of a massive and well-funded research venture into

development and adoption of renewable energy; 2) vigorously cutting

emissions through mandatory targets; 3) and maintaining and restoring

old-growth forest ecosystems. Anything less rigorous is likely to

doom the Planet to climate induced ecological Armageddon.

g.b.

P.S. I very much hope you are availing yourself of Forests.org's

massive Climate Change Portal, the Climate Ark at

http://www.climateark.org/. The Climate Ark is dedicated to

promoting public policy that addresses global climate change through

reductions in carbon dioxide and other emissions, energy

conservation, renewable energy sources and ending deforestation.

Please use this resource, and if you have a web site provide a link.

We will soon unveil the site's massive and comprehensive new Climate

Change Link directory at http://www.climateark.org/links/.

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ITEM #1

Title: Study Cites Carbon Dioxide's 'Sink'

Date: June 21, 2001

Byline: JOHN HEILPRIN, Associated Press Writer

WASHINGTON (AP) - New estimates of the United States' contribution to

global warming show that forest growth, crops and rivers absorb a

quarter to a half of the nation's yearly 1.5 billion tons of carbon

dioxide emitted from burning fossil fuels.

But that cushion against a buildup in atmospheric greenhouse gases

will likely disappear over the next century as forests mature and

absorb less carbon, said Stephen Pacala, a Princeton University

researcher.

``That means the greenhouse problem is going to get worse, not

better, because fossil fuel emissions are going up at the same

time,'' said Pacala, lead author of one of two carbon absorption

studies appearing Friday in the journal Science.

In the other study, researchers estimate a net gain in carbon storage

as the result of timber management programs and reforestation efforts

in China.

President Bush's opposition to the Kyoto climate treaty, a 1997

international plan to curb global warming, has brought attention to

the issue of increasing man-made gases, principally carbon dioxide

from the burning of oil, gas and coal.

European Union leaders and Bush this month promised to ``agree to

disagree.'' The treaty calls for a sharp reduction of carbon dioxide

emissions, and Bush says compliance is too expensive and ill-timed

with the nation's energy and economic problems.

Bush is pressing for more research instead, while the EU says it will

continue backing the treaty, though none of its member nations has

ratified it.

Pacala said his study shows the amount of carbon dioxide emissions

absorbed through natural processes in the United States is

considerable, though not nearly as large as previously suggested. In

1998, the conclusion of another Princeton-led study saying the lower

48 states, southern Canada and Mexico absorb 1.5 billion tons of

carbon per year was roundly criticized by scientists as inflated.

The new study found that the United States absorbs 407 million to 781

million tons of carbon each year.

``Our own work would suggest that the lower end of that range is

certainly reasonable,'' said Jerry Melillo, co-director of The

Ecosystems Center of the Marine Biological Laboratory in Woods Hole,

Mass.

Much of the absorption, or what some scientists call a natural

``sink,'' occurs through photosynthesis as growing trees take in

carbon dioxide. The nation has benefited from allowing cleared tracts

to recover, letting farmland revert to forests and suppressing forest

fires.

But as the forests mature, they take in less carbon dioxide. ``What

that all means is that a sink caused by land use or ecosystem

recovery is generally expected to decline,'' said George Hurtt, a co-

author of the study and researcher at the University of New

Hampshire.

Of the amount absorbed naturally, some 77 million to 143 million tons

are exported to other countries as agricultural products. That means

the total impact of the United States' absorption is, from a global

perspective, the removal from the atmosphere of 330 million to 638

million tons of carbon per year.

A team led by Jingyun Fang of Peking University found that a program

of preserving and planting trees in China begun in the mid-1970s has

resulted in storage in the forests of about 495 million tons of

carbon.

China's forests now cover 330 million acres and are growing, the

researchers say.

The study concludes that improved forest management could contribute

significantly to carbon storage, thus helping to offset the release

of carbon dioxide.

ITEM #2

Title: Studies Measure Capacity of "Carbon Sinks"

Date: June 21, 2001

Byline: John Roach for National Geographic News

After years of wide disagreement, scientists are getting a better

grip on how much carbon Earth's forests and other biological

components suck out of the atmosphere, thus acting as "carbon sinks."

New research in this area may be highly useful in efforts to devise

international strategies to address global warming.

The emission of carbon dioxide from the combustion of fossil fuels is

the leading cause of the buildup of greenhouse gases in the

atmosphere, which many people believe is the main culprit behind an

increase in Earth's temperatures. For a long time, scientists have

known that forests, crops, soils, and other organic matter soak up

some of that carbon, thereby slowing down the rate of global warming.

Yet their calculations of how much carbon is absorbed have differed,

in some cases significantly.

A team of scientists led by Stephen Pacala, a professor of ecology

and evolutionary biology at Princeton University in New Jersey, set

out to resolve this discrepancy in calculations. Their research is

reported in the June 22 issue of Science.

Different Measuring Techniques

While some carbon is absorbed by organic matter such as trees and

shrubs, carbon is also regularly emitted into the atmosphere by

activities on land such as the burning of fossil fuels.

Researchers' lack of agreement on how much carbon is "stored" has

been rooted in the use of two different methods of measurement-one

atmosphere based, the other land based.

The first method involves measuring concentrations of carbon dioxide

in the air as the air moves across landmasses from Point A to Point

B. The second method entails making an inventory of all the carbon in

a given area of ground and calculating the difference between the

levels of carbon recorded from year to year.

Although there is wide variation among different atmospheric models

of carbon measurement, their results have consistently indicated that

higher levels of carbon are absorbed than the land-based models show.

Pacala said his team's land-based analysis was more thorough than

earlier studies. "We did the first exhaustive analysis of the land

sink," he said.

Previous land-based models inventoried mainly the amount of carbon

absorbed by trees, he explained. He and his colleagues included

measures of carbon absorbed by landfills, soils, houses, and even

silt at the bottom of reservoirs.

"We found out that the land sink was bigger than had been reported

by other analyses, about twice as big, and the atmosphere [models]

gave numbers that were consistent," he said.

The researchers used their results to help answer a major question

that has been a subject of much contention: How big is the entire

"carbon sink" of the continental United States?

According to their findings, the scientists estimate that U.S.

forests and other terrestrial components absorb from one-third to

two-thirds of a billion tons of carbon each year.

At the same time, reliable figures indicate that the United States

emits more than two to four times that amount of carbon each year,

about 1.4 billion tons.

Taking into account the carbon sink effect, 800 million to 1.1

billion tons of carbon accumulates annually in the atmosphere, the

researchers say. This refutes the idea that the U.S carbon sink is

big enough to equal the amount of carbon that U.S. factories emit

through the burning of fossil fuels, as some studies have concluded.

The results of the Princeton-led study are particularly interesting

because the 23 scientists who participated in the research and agreed

on the conclusions initially held strongly differing views about the

size of the U.S. carbon sink.

Diminishing Effect

Pacala and his colleagues say the main reason the United States is

drawing in a large volume of carbon is because many forests and areas

of land that were logged or converted to agriculture in the last 100

years are now recovering with the growth of new vegetation.

These trees and shrubs absorb carbon dioxide from the air and channel

it into the growth of massive tree trunks, branches, and foliage.

This, in turn, gradually expands the overall size of the U.S. carbon

sink.

Pacala emphasizes, however, that the U.S. absorption of carbon does

not fully offset the emissions of carbon from fossil fuels and should

not be seen as a license to release more carbon. A large part of the

current sink effect, he said, is the land re-absorbing large

quantities of carbon that were released during heavy farming and

logging of the past.

"When we chopped down the forests, we released carbon trapped in the

trees into the atmosphere. When we plowed up the prairies, we

released carbon from the grasslands and soils into the atmosphere,"

said Pacala. "Now the ecosystem is taking some of that back." But, he

added, the sink effect will steadily decrease and eventually

disappear-as U.S. ecosystems complete their recovery from past land

use. "The carbon sinks are going to decrease at the same time as our

fossil fuel emissions increase," he said. "Thus, the greenhouse

problem is going to get worse faster than we expected."

Carbon Sink in China

In a separate study in Science, researchers reported on a similar

carbon sink effect in China, which they attribute to the regrowth of

logged forests and intensive planting of new forests.

Jingyun Fang, an ecology professor at Peking University in Beijing,

and his colleagues noted that Chinese forests were heavily exploited

from 1949 to the end of the 1970s. Since then, however, the overnment

has undertaken wide-scale forest planting and reforestation, mainly

to combat erosion, flooding, desertification, and loss of

biodiversity.

An unintended consequence of this increase in vegetation was the

growth of a carbon sink that is estimated to be on par with that of

North American forests.

More Information

Limited Carbon Benefits in Forests?

The two new studies on the size of the U.S. and Chinese carbon sinks

follow two studies from Duke University in North Carolina that

demonstrated the limited effect of planting forests to mitigate

climate change. The studies were published in the May 24 issue of

Nature.

Some policy experts argue that increased carbon absorption from the

planting of new forests could help mitigate global warming by drawing

in more carbon from the atmosphere.

The Duke studies, however, which were conducted in forests operated

by the university, showed that the increased absorption of carbon by

forests lasts only a few years because of factors such as the limited

amount of nitrogen in the ground, which trees need for growth.

Taken together, the studies in Science and Nature indicate that while

forests may help mitigate the pace of global warming, reductions in

carbon dioxide emissions will still be necessary to cool off the

Earth, said Eric Davidson, a senior scientist at the Woods Hole

Research Center in Massachusetts.

"In trying to avoid global warming, maintaining forests can help us

buy a little time because they are keeping the atmosphere from

accumulating heat-trapping gases as quickly as they would otherwise,"

he said. "But we can't sit around and be sanguine. The planet is

warming at a faster rate than it has in the last 100 years."

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