Away from Climategate and back to science, here’s something interesting fingering land use as an issue. This is from the Max Planck Society.
A new calculation of Europe’s greenhouse gas balance shows that emissions of methane and nitrous oxide tip the balance and eliminate Europe’s terrestrial sink of greenhouse-gases.
Of all global carbon dioxide emissions, less than half accumulate in the atmosphere where it contributes to global warming. The remainder is hidden away in oceans and terrestrial ecosystems such as forests, grasslands and peat-lands. Stimulating this “free service” of aquatic and terrestrial ecosystems is considered one of the main, immediately available ways of reducing climate change. However, new greenhouse gas bookkeeping has revealed that for the European continent this service isn’t free after all. These findings are presented in the most recent edition of Nature Geoscience (Advanced Online Publication, November 22, 2009).
Researchers from 17 European countries cooperating in the EU-Integrated Project CarboEurope, led by Detlef Schulze, of the Max Planck Institute for Biogeochemistry in Jena, Germany have compiled the first comprehensive greenhouse gas balance of Europe. They made two independent estimates: one based on what the atmosphere sees and one based on what terrestrial ecosystems see.
The new bookkeeping effort confirmed the existence of a strong carbon sink of -305 Million tonnes of carbon per year in European forests and grasslands. A sink of this magnitude could offset 19% of the emission from fossil fuel burning. However, agricultural land and drained peat-land are emitting CO2, which cancels part of this sink. The resulting net CO2 sink of the European continent is 274 Million tonnes of carbon per year – only 15% of the emissions from fossil fuel burning. But this balance is still incomplete, because all European ecosystems are managed and as a by-product of land management other powerful greenhouse gases are released – for example nitrous oxide from fertilizers applied to grassland and crops, and methane from ruminants and from peat-lands. These previously neglected emissions of greenhouse gases from land-use cancel out almost the entire carbon sink, leaving the landscape offsetting only some 2% of the CO2 emissions from households, transport and industry.
Compared to Europe as a whole, the situation is even worse for the 25 states of the European Union. Here, although forests and grasslands can compensate for 13% of the CO2 emitted by fossil fuel burning, emission of powerful greenhouse gases from agricultural emissions and peat mining reduces the effectiveness of the land surface sink to 111 Million tonnes of carbon per year, which is only 11% of the CO2 emitted by fossil fuels. However, since the emissions of methane and nitrous oxide are relatively higher in the European Union the land surface emerges as a greenhouse gas source of 34 Million tonnes of carbon per year. This effectively increases the emissions from fossil fuel burning by another 3%.
Prof Schulze said “These findings show that if the European landscape is to contribute to mitigating global warming, we need a new, different emphasis on land management. Methane and nitrous oxide are such powerful greenhouse gases; we must manage the landscape to decrease their emissions.”
Related links:
Original work:
E. D. Schulze, S. Luyssaert, P. Ciais, A. Freibauer, I. A. Janssens et al., 2009
Importance of methane and nitrous oxide for Europe’s terrestrial greenhouse-gas balance
Nature Geoscience, November 22, 2009, DOI 10.1038/ngeo686 PDF (225 KB)
The chart is of net CO2 emission from land use, ignoring cities, transport etc. I can definitely give you the reason for the red blob in East Anglia – soil loss through erosion and oxidation of the peat. I used to live on the rivers there and work in many of the wetland nature reserves, and in many places the land is significantly lower (6′ or more) than the river where it used to be the same height before it was drained. All that soil has oxidised to CO2 (there’s very little fluvial erosion since the rivers are slow moving and effectively canalised). I’m pretty sure the same is true of Holland.
Other high-net-emission areas are probably due to intensive grassland – both through fertiliser use (embedded oil) and direct emissions from livestock.
This kind of study just brings back why all the traditional issues us ‘practical’ Greens have been concerned with – industrial monoculture, soil erosion, deforestation – are still just as important as the current obsession with direct fossil fuel emissions.
The really important point here is that it’s all related – although I’m still not convinced by Lovelock’s 6C disaster scenario on the basis of current evidence, one of his most telling points is that although Earth has had effective negative feedback systems (forests, for one) to retain homeostasis throughout its history, we are systematically wrecking them, at the same time as presenting a major challenge to the equilibrium. I just hope he’s wrong…
Re-reading the article above it seems they are counting direct NO2 emissions from fertilisers, but possibly not the indirect CO2 from the energy embedded in its manufacture. I guess that’s arguably consistent, but actually makes the situation look better than it really is.
I should also have said above – “the chart is of net *CO2-equivalent* emission from land use”
John Peter (05:36:30) :
Looking at the paper, Finland is a net biological CO2 sink. It’s methane does Finland in; I didn’t read carefully enough to see why. Heavy industry? The figure above does NOT include emissions from burning fossil fuels. If you add in those emissions, the continent becomes a net source.
Incidentally, the corresponding figure in the paper looks incorrect; the one above from the press release looks right. I hope that means somebody caught the error.
Smoking gun. Most of the wild population of methane producing animals are gone and the rest are penned. The number of cattle in pastures and pens that replaced this population is NO WHERE near the numbers of wild ruminating animals that once roamed free, chewing up the grasslands into dust and eating tender tree sprouts thus keeping forests in check.
We still act as if the Earth is barely out of its infancy and the pittance of humans on the Earth have somehow caused an unbalanced gaseous state. In truth, the Earth has never been balanced. If it were, we would probably get mass extinctions. The cycle of life depends on an out of balance system in order to survive. We haven’t even begun to match what nature does to keep the system out of balance. It is the likely case that any attempt we make to somehow bring the Earth into balance will likely trigger a rather large response by said Earth to throw it once again out of balance.
I see no red over the Pyrenees , but plenty over the Dolomites .
@John Peter
“I find it hard to believe that Finland of all places with its extensive forests is listed as a net CO2 emitter.”
What is really weird is that the more heavily populated parts of Finland (South & South-west) show up as basically carbon neutral, but the part that just about nobody lives in shows up as net emitter. I mean, that part of Finland is just about empty with nothing but forest and random small farms here and there. The largest town on that red area is Rovaniemi, but I don’t think it’s 59’000 residents and total lack of heavy industry would cause that.
Something is definitely not right with this graph.
“”” Marco (07:50:49) :
@John Peter
“I find it hard to believe that Finland of all places with its extensive forests is listed as a net CO2 emitter.” “””
Well I think you just cited the likely reason for that fact; same thing applies to Canada.
It’s so cold up there, and so little sunlight that those trees just don’t grow fast enough to compensate for man made or natural carbon emissions.
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George E. Smith (17:19:16) :
Well fancy that. And North America; well that part that is the United States, is evidently a net carbon SINK.
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Interesting, but should be obvious — the areas of carbon sink are where forests are regrowing. Sweden has excellent forest management, and NW Russia perhaps hasn’t much re-cut their NW forests to a large extent yet. A similar map for N Amer would be interesting.
Sort of explains the US carbon sink too. After almost all of the US eastern hardwood forest was cut by the 1930s, large areas have and continue to grow back, particularly in the mountainous areas. The rural county where I’m in MD is a remarkable 95% forested now, with a relatively small amount of well-managed timber harvesting. Replanting isn’t necessary here as most of the tree species quickly resprout from the stumps (the existing forests are almost all resprouts from previous cuttings).
Summer high-temps have dropped considerably here since the ’30s & to a lesser extent the ’60s when 100F+ temps were common, prb’ly due to the forests. Annual precip has also risen near 10% since the ’30s (but only getting back to the ~1900 levels).
“”” beng (08:51:17) :
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George E. Smith (17:19:16) :
Well fancy that. And North America; well that part that is the United States, is evidently a net carbon SINK.
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Interesting, but should be obvious — the areas of carbon sink are where forests are regrowing. “””
Why don’t you select yourself a nice cigar there Beng !
It has been observed that forests can do one of three things. They can simply evaporate as fallen trees rot, and return the material to the ground and the atmosphere; plus there is the California solution where we simply incinerate them each year.
Alternatively, they can continue to manufacture wood, until the forest becomes one impenetrable solid block of wood, byt taking up carbon from the atmosphere. This solution to the differential equation has never actually been observed to occur; so it is more an academic curiosity.
The other thing that forest can do, and most do this, is remain in a state of dynamic equilibrium, where new trees and foliage take up carbon seasonally, but old dead trees rot, and return the carbon to the atmosphere; so they remain carbon neutral; neither helping the carbon footprint; nor hindering it.
The correct scientific term for this last forest behavior is “Old Growth”, and environmental activists pursue this ultimate in non useful steady states, with a passion. Well in truth the non-useful term is only as regards human use. That mode of stability does serve the interests of skunks, and yellow slugs.
Active tree farming as widely practiced in the USA, and also in New Zealand (very efficiently), tends to maintain the continuous growth cycle, as new trees are planted in wide open (clear cut) areas, to maximise carbon uptake rates. Eventually the trees collide with each other, and efficient carbon uptake slows since each tree is now space constrained. This can then stop lower branch growth in conifers, which tends to turn pine trees into telephone poles (the AT&T tree), which is very effective for logging, and carbon uptake.
Ye, I bet those arctic forests (is that arboreal) of Finland, are quite beautiful; and stagnant too.
Fortunately, in the USA we are able to grow many variaties even in farmed forests, so the whole place is not just pinus radiata ad infinitum.
NZ grows a lot of “Oregon Pine”; aka Douglas fir; which is much faster growing than the immaculate Kauri Pine; the King of the forest.
Global warming would be good for Canuckland; which has the land and the trees but not the sunshine and growing season to fully produce from their vast forests. If you haven’t ever driven the AlCan through the Yukon; you don’t know what a real forest looks like. Well arboreal forest anyway; I’ll give you the Amazon as a no brainer.
I have been saying for a long time, ever since the Princeton Studies of 2000, that USA and all of North America, north of 51degrees, is a giant carbon sink.
So despite producing 25% of the World’s goods with less than 6% of the World’s population, and having plenty of natural sources if CO2, we bio-sequester all that and more. We even sequester some of Eurasia’s excess, and don’t even charge a dime for doing so. CO2, such that it is a genuine problem, and not a complete H-O-A-X, is other people’s problem. We have done our part, and more.
In other Words, we North Americans have solved our CO2 problem, rest of the World get on the Stick. It has been costly, but we made the tough land use set-asides decisions over time.
It is not all inaccessible and useless land that was set aside too. What do you think the commercial value of the land in NYC Central Park is? Or Grant’s Park in Chicago? Its perfect to put skyscrapers on, so its pretty valuable space, but we E-V-I-L capitalist Americans have foregone the almighty dollar, and set it aside anyway. We should be rewarded for all that sacrifice, and forgone income. Meanwhile, Go away. Hector someone else, and leave us alone. Now take your Cap & Tax, and insert it where the sun don’t shine, to plug up another source of CH4.
Much of what passes for environmentalism is just so much general Rubbish. The Amazon is NOT a carbon Sink. Despite all the blather to save the Rain Forests. It is a mature forest where, on net, little carbon bio-sequestration occurs. Trees die and rot and others grow to take their place bu the bio-mass is pretty constant.
In North America our sage forefathers established vast parks, wilderness, and areas dedicated to Husbandry, Agriculture and Silviculture. All these areas provide places for wildlife, domestic runinants, and large sources of lumber and paper. They also bio-sequester prodigious quantities of CO2.
The knothead greens think cows are problem with their methane production. Gee in retrospect, it was a great idea to kill off the North American Buffalo whose vast herds covered the land from horizon to horizon. All eating praerie and belching methane from both ends from their bigger bodies.
So if you want to reduce the Methane, (Why?), then I propose a typical knotheaded green proposal, I’m sure the Greens will support. We have a massive hunt and kill off all the ruminants in the Sarengetti. Who knew we don’t need Gnus? or Impalas, Zebras et al.
Then we go ahead and cut down the Amazon for lumber and paper; and start growing much more effective bio-sequestration plants.