From the Smithsonian Environmental Research Center blog:
“The chief culprit appears to be climate change, more specifically, the rising levels of atmospheric CO2, higher temperatures and longer growing seasons.”
This jibes well with what NASA has been seeing globally via satellite measurements:
Surprise: Earths’ Biosphere is Booming, Satellite Data Suggests CO2 the Cause
And what has been found by the University of Wisconsin in Madison:
Greenhouse gas carbon dioxide ramps up aspen growth
Here’s the full report from the Smithsonian:
Forests are growing faster, climate change appears to driving accelerated growth
Speed is not a word typically associated with trees; they can take centuries to grow. However, a new study to be published the week of Feb. 1 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences has found evidence that forests in the Eastern United States are growing faster than they have in the past 225 years. The study offers a rare look at how an ecosystem is responding to climate change.
Liriodendron tulipifera
, or tulip poplar, is a common tree in the temperate forests surrounding the Smithsonian Environmental Research Center. Other species include sweetgum, American beech, and southern red oak. Photo: Kirsten Bauer.For more than 20 years forest ecologist Geoffrey Parker has tracked the growth of 55 stands of mixed hardwood forest plots in Maryland. The plots range in size, and some are as large as 2 acres. Parker’s research is based at the Smithsonian Environmental Research Center, 26 miles east of the nation’s capital.
Parker’s tree censuses have revealed that the forest is packing on weight at a much faster rate than expected. He and Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute postdoctoral fellow Sean McMahon discovered that, on average, the forest is growing an additional 2 tons per acre annually. That is the equivalent of a tree with a diameter of 2 feet sprouting up over a year.
Forest ecologist Jess Parker began his tree censuses his first day on the job: September 8, 1987. Photo: Kirsten Bauer.
Forests and their soils store the majority of the Earth’s terrestrial carbon stock. Small changes in their growth rate can have significant ramifications in weather patterns, nutrient cycles, climate change and biodiversity. Exactly how these systems will be affected remains to be studied.
Parker and McMahon’s paper focuses on the drivers of the accelerated tree growth. The chief culprit appears to be climate change, more specifically, the rising levels of atmospheric CO2, higher temperatures and longer growing seasons.
Assessing how a forest is changing is no easy task. Forest ecologists know that the trees they study will most likely outlive them. One way they compensate for this is by creating a “chronosequence”—a series of forests plots of the same type that are at different developmental stages. At SERC, Parker meticulously tracks the growth of trees in stands that range from 5 to 225 years old. This allowed Parker and McMahon to verify that there was accelerated growth in forest stands young and old. More than 90% of the stands grew two to four times faster than predicted from the baseline chronosequence.
Parker, his colleagues and a team of citizen scientists have tagged more than 20,000 trees at the Smithsonian Environmental Research Center. Photo: Kirsten Bauer.
By grouping the forest stands by age, McMahon and Parker were also able to determine that the faster growth is a recent phenomenon. If the forest stands had been growing this quickly their entire lives, they would be much larger than they are.
Parker estimates that among himself, his colleague Dawn Miller and a cadre of citizen scientists, they have taken a quarter of a million measurements over the years. Parker began his tree census work Sept. 8, 1987—his first day on the job. He measures all trees that are 2 centimeters or more in diameter. He also identifies the species, marks the tree’s coordinates and notes if it is dead or alive.
By knowing the species and diameter, McMahon is able to calculate the biomass of a tree. He specializes in the data-analysis side of forest ecology. “Walking in the woods helps, but so does looking at the numbers,” said McMahon. He analyzed Parker’s tree censuses but was hungry for more data.
Parker uses diameter tape or ‘d-tape’ to measure the trees. The tape is calibrated to convert the tree’s circumference, the measurement used to determine a tree’s biomass. Photo: Kirsten Bauer.
It was not enough to document the faster growth rate; Parker and McMahon wanted to know why it might be happening. “We made a list of reasons these forests could be growing faster and then ruled half of them out,” said Parker. The ones that remained included increased temperature, a longer growing season and increased levels of atmospheric CO2.
During the past 22 years CO2 levels at SERC have risen 12%, the mean temperature has increased by nearly three-tenths of a degree and the growing season has lengthened by 7.8 days. The trees now have more CO2 and an extra week to put on weight. Parker and McMahon suggest that a combination of these three factors has caused the forest’s accelerated biomass gain.
Ecosystem responses are one of the major uncertainties in predicting the effects of climate change. Parker thinks there is every reason to believe his study sites are representative of the Eastern deciduous forest, the regional ecosystem that surrounds many of the population centers on the East Coast. He and McMahon hope other forest ecologists will examine data from their own tree censuses to help determine how widespread the phenomenon is.
These findings are also important for policymakers trying to address climate change. Future carbon cap-and-trade rules will need to quantify the amount of carbon forests hold. If faster growth rates prove the norm, this could affect the formulas and the dollar value assigned to forests that are cut or conserved.
Parker and McMahon don’t expect SERC’s forest to continue growing at this accelerated rate forever. Some day the growth rate will level off. When that happens, they wonder how that will affect CO2 levels. If trees are sponges that absorb CO2, what will happen to CO2 levels in the atmosphere when the trees become saturated? It’s a question for further exploration. In the meantime, Parker will continue walking through the SERC woods, tape measure in hand carefully tracking the growth of the trees.
PNAS will make the study available online sometime this week at this link: http://www.pnas.org/cgi/doi/10.1073/pnas.0912376107.
cheap r4i (00:59:56) :
Don’t you rather mean it’s helping scientists find sequestration processes of funding?
p.g.sharrow “PG” (22:20:30) :
I agree PG, those greens are some squirrely people.
Question: ” … what will happen to CO2 levels in the atmosphere when the trees become saturated? It’s a question for further exploration.
Answer: Just because the trees become saturated, doesn’t mean that the biosphere is anywhere near saturation. All we have to do is look at the 112 foot thick seam of coal at the Rawhide Mine in the Powder River Basin of Wyoming for an example of how voluminous a biomass can get at any one time at much higher ambient levels of CO2.
good point hswiseman,
I meant no offense to Mr. Parker or his efforts.
Do you agree with this statement from 2001?
“• the absorption coefficients for the CO2 bands at a concentration of 400 ppm are 1 to 2 orders of magnitude too small to be significant even if the CO2 concentrations were doubled.”
source: http://pubs.acs.org/subscribe/journals/ci/31/special/may01_viewpoint.html
On terms other then the fact that we’re running out of coal (40-50% of annual power generation), why is a Carbon and Cap & Trade Tax tired to “Global Warming” and why is it justified?
Can’t we just leave the whole issue to Pollution is Bad and we need to find more efficient energy sources or am I missing something?
Don’t forget this gem:
From Canada to the Caribbean: Tree leaves control their own temperature
June 11th, 2008
The temperature inside a healthy, photosynthesizing tree leaf is affected less by outside environmental temperature than originally believed, according to new research from biologists at the University of Pennsylvania.
Surveying 39 tree species ranging in location from subtropical to boreal climates, researchers found a nearly constant temperature in tree leaves. {…}
Tree photosynthesis, according to the study, most likely occurs when leaf temperatures are about 21°C, with latitude or average growing-season temperature playing little, if any, role. This homeostasis of leaf temperature means that in colder climates leaf temperatures are elevated and in warmer climates tree leaves cool to reach optimal conditions for photosynthesis. Therefore, methods that assume leaf temperature is fixed to ambient air require new consideration.{…}
The research, published online in this week’s Nature, contradicts the longstanding assumption that temperature and relative humidity in an actively photosynthesizing leaf are coupled to ambient air conditions. For decades, scientists studying climate change have measured the oxygen isotope ratio in tree-ring cellulose to determine the ambient temperature and relative humidity of past climates. The assumption in all of these studies was that tree leaf temperatures were equal to ambient temperatures.
http://www.sciencecentric.com/news/article.php?q=08061131
R. Craigen (14:16:24) : Well … if the ultimate goal is to absorb carbon, the answer is pretty obvious, except apparently to the Smithsonians: Cut down the damn trees! And plant new ones, that is.
Good idea… In addition, how about burning them in an oxygen depleted oven, and bury the carbon. We have many forests that burned 75-100 years ago, and that charcol is still lying on the ground.
Greg Rehmke (14:47:28) : Could cleaner air also influence the rate of tree growth? Sunlight would be a bit more intense as certain pollution levels fall, especially those that create haze. The answer is YES. Anyone who grows plants in a greenhouse, and has used artificial light to augment the short winter hours, has noticed intensity of light is a big deal in plant growth.
Pamela Gray (06:24:09) :
Pamela,
I finally get to return, in some small measure, some knowledge to you. I’ve enjoyed all of your comments.
However, you are referring to an all time, cinematic triumph entitle “Attack of the Killer Tomatoes.” I think I was able to stand about 15 minutes of the film, It was more fun to talk about than watch.
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0080391/
Regarding saturation of CO2. Plants are very cunning. As CO2 levels rise their new leaves develop fewer stoma: this regulates the amount of CO2 they take AND reduces the expiration of water vapour – which exits from the stoma. Result? Plants and trees grow with less requirement for water in higher CO2 concentrations – a double bonus!
Gagging noxious, unbreathable smoke from a chimney?
Pshaw.
Why would I joke about that?
I have experienced it half a dozen times, so far, this winter on walks I have taken in the evening on a stroll or jog I have taken around my neighborhood of “clean, all-electric homes” … this is in one of the residential suburbs surrounding Dallas, Texas just a mile or so off US-75 (’75’ is known as “Central Expressway” in Dallas proper) …
I am DEADLY SERIOUS about this issue; this is in the category of unintended consequences … if the ‘greenies’ think a step back is the right direction, they are mistaken.
Ever read the account of the “Donora Smog”? Donora Smog Kills 20 October, 1948
Now, on the practical side, this issue of ‘wood burning’ would not be an issue if neighbors were a mile down the road; that’s not the case in a city environment, in a development with larger lot sizes even …
– – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – –
Some background, references:
Web search on: 20% opacity wood smoke
The Health Effects of Wood Smoke
Residents Against Wood Smoke Emission Particulates Support Black Carbon Reduction Bill of 2009
Residents against involuntary inhalation of wood smoke: Wood Smoke Photos
It smelled like burning plastic. Their eyes were burning. It was awful
.
.
“”” Philip Foster (08:20:36) :
Regarding saturation of CO2. Plants are very cunning. As CO2 levels rise their new leaves develop fewer stoma: this regulates the amount of CO2 they take AND reduces the expiration of water vapour – which exits from the stoma. Result? Plants and trees grow with less requirement for water in higher CO2 concentrations – a double bonus! “””
One of the “good” things about “climatology”, is that it involves people of all sorts of diciplines. So in a forum like this, we get to learn new stuff about all sorts of things we would never have imagined.
Such as this gem about plants and their CO2/water interractions.
Thanks Philip.
Well fat trees are big problem when you try to hug them. The results of this study will be repudiated by the green mean “warmers crowd”. As has been pointed out above, increased growth may be due to increased CO2 or it may be due to longer growing season or it may be due to higher temperatures. How can you separate out the effects of increasing temperature and increasing CO2 if both are occurring?
Were back to micro-climates here.
The author neglected to mention the new dairy farm that circles his little forest.
Link to the paper:
Evidence for a recent increase in forest growth
Sean M. McMahon, Geoffrey G. Parker, and Dawn R. Miller, 2010
http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2010/02/02/0912376107.full.pdf
Fig. 3B is annotated (B) Data from Annapolis, MD (15
km north of Edgewater) showed that first frosts arrive later and last frosts
arrive sooner, increasing the length of the frost-free growing season
(growing season shown as days, first and last frosts as day of the year).
“More than 90% of the stands grew two to four times faster than predicted”. This is huge! I mean, humongously huge!
It also totally discredits Al Gore’s hockey stick graph derived from tree ring data.
I am sure it will be really an interesting to see how the whole biodiversity react to the changes in the next decade. If the observations described here are true than we’ll have to make sure to avoid that.
While I laud the effort to observe and collect data in a project of this magnitude, I question the CO2 fertilization issue. The rise in atmospheric CO2 concentration has been virtually linear since 1960. It would follow that we should see sequential increases in growth rates as well over the 50 year span. This does not appear to be the case. I have not heard that there is some threshold level of CO2 concentration that sets loose the growth process, although there has been alot of talk about saturation and growth rate stabilization. The question I would like to see answered is “How come the increase in growth rate does not correlate to the monotonic increase in atmospheric CO2?”
Saturation and ultimate tree size limitations may represent an upper end limit on the ability of trees to sequester CO2, but only with respect to unmanaged forestry. A plant-grow-harvest practice will remove the upper limit specimens and replace them with fast growing younger trees that will continue a virtuous carbon cycle. Tree-ring studies adjust for these growth rate differentials as study populations age.
Just a thought, apropos of nothing, as future historians will have the final word on the socio-political phenomena of our age. I find it uncanny how the mind-set of the eco-ists exhibits features reminiscent of millenarianism. This ‘flight’ into uncritical acceptance of the language of ‘doomsday’, full of indignation, righteousness and moral fervour ,is highly charged with a theology of ‘us’, the ‘saved’, and ‘the other’, called by them ‘deniers’.
‘Deniers’ are seen as wilfully acting against the planet and the future. They are flat earthers etc, …all untrue, of course but inextricably linked in the manichaen world view, informing their flight from reason.
They have their prophets, and the route to salvation is marked out. Spooky!
‘Millenarian groups claim that the current society and its rulers are corrupt, unjust, or otherwise wrong. They therefore believe they will be destroyed soon by a powerful force. The harmful nature of the status quo is always considered intractable without the anticipated dramatic change.’
Source Wikipaedia
JDN (20:26:41),
I note your denigration of the internationally esteemed physicist, Prof Freeman Dyson, who synthesized and reduced to practice the Feynman/Schwinger/Tomonaga solutions to the renormalization problems of quantum electrodynamics. But since he questions AGW, he is, by his own admission, a heretic.
Glad to see you try to tear him down. Now I know I’m on the right track.
If this is true then we should be happy we don’t need to plant trees for reforestation. Maybe mother nature is helping us to save the planet earth.
Hmm…
Interesting bit of calculations can fall out of this thesis…
Assumption: 2.0 tons/yr/acre additional growth in forest mass. (Let’s assume that means that 1 ton of CO2 is removed from the air and put into tree structures.)
Right now there are approximately 9.8 Billion acres of forest. That means that the forests worldwide are extracting an additional 9.8Billion tons of CO2 per year.
In 1999, the world produced around 2.0 Billion Tons of CO2 due to industrial processes/emissions.
Doesn’t this mean that the forests can “process” out the CO2 we are pumping in?
Edwin
1 ton of aviation fuel, when burned, produces enough CO2 to make 1500 loaves of bread.
Haha. So basically here is what people have forgotten from basic science class in grade school that is illustrated well in this article: Plants need CO2 for photosynthesis, the process in which they create food. During that process they release O2, the form of oxygen we and other animals breath in, we then exhale CO2. It is a cycle. We both help each other. CO2 is not a threat, if anything the slight increases in CO2 we are outputting are helping to green the planet. Not to mention, the amount we actually output compared to naturally occurring increases is very slight(Naturally occurring increasing out do us by far). Here is a little sample of the email’s that were hacked. This whole idea thaty man is killing the planet is an absurd one being used to gain government control and to line to pockets of people like Al Gore who own the companies that make money off “carbon credits.” His movie was simply a well hidden advertisement for the company he started years prior to it’s release. And for the sample(excerpt from group discussion amongst top scientist):
At 01:31 PM 10/30/03 -0500, Michael E. Mann wrote:
Guys,
So the verification RE for the “censored” NH mean reconstruction? -6.64
The verification RE for the original MBH98 NH mean reconstruction: 0.42
I think the case is really strong now!
What if were to eliminate the discussion of all the other technical details (and just
say they exist), and state more nicely that these series were effectively censored by
their substitutions, and that by removing those series which they censored, I get a
similar result, with a dismal RE.
And most people would keep the RE of 0.42 over the RE of -6, right? So this would make
that point. I think we also need to say something about the process, etc. (the intro was
based on something that Malcolm/Ray had originally crafted).
Thoughts, comments? Thanks,
mike
I’m thinking of a note saying basically this, and attaching this figure.
Could everybody sign on to something like this?
Thanks for all your help,
mike
At 05:11 PM 10/30/2003 +0000, Keith Briffa wrote:
Ray et al
I agree with this idea in principle . Whatever scientific differences and fascination
with the nuances of techniques we may /may not share, this whole process represents the
most despicable example of slander and down right deliberate perversion of the
scientific process , and bias (unverified) work being used to influence public
perception and due political process. It is , however, essential that you (we) do not
get caught up in the frenzy that these people are trying to generate, and that will more
than likely lead to error on our part or some premature remarks that we might regret. I
do think the statement re Mike’s results needs making , but only after it can be based
on repeated work and in full collaboration of us all. I am happy to push Tim to take the
lead and collaborate in this – and I feel we could get sanction very quickly from the
DEFRA if needed. BUT this must be done calmly , and in the meantime a restrained
statement but out saying we have full confidence in Mike’s objectivity and independence
– which we can not say of the sceptics. In fact I am moved tomorrow to contact Nature
and urge them to do an editorial on this . The political machinations in Washington
should NOT dictate the agenda or scheduling of the work – but some cool statement can be
made saying we believe the “prats have really fucked up someway” – and that the
premature publication of their paper is reprehensible . Much of the detail in Mikes
response though is not sensible (sorry Mike) and is rising to their bate.
Keith
So now you are all admitting that global warming is real, but defending it as a good thing because some trees are growing faster. So I assume you’ll be defending all of the natural disasters that come your way as good things as well. You geniuses have got it all figured out.
REPLY: What a coincidence that you’ve posted here just now. I was planning on featuring your company as a source for an upcoming post I’m working on about retrofitting my home with LED lighting. That won’t be happening now. Look for the story this weekend. – Anthony
Wow Craig. The world cools and warms, it has been for as long as it has existed. The question is mainly this: Are humans responsible. The answer, absolutely not. As I stated before, human activity accounts for a negligible(nearly nothing) in the levels of CO2 as well as(even more so) the change in temperature. It is a naturally occurring phenomena. We have almost no part in it. It is safe to say at a high level that we have no part in it at all. The global-warming/climate change caused by human activity is a scam for money and control. The proposed ways of lowering our CO2 output, immediately can be made useless from a single volcanic eruption. The largest contributor to CO2 increases is simply organic material, or otherwise naturally occurring. The increases in temperature is also more attributed to increases in radiation levels from the sun. Which also has occurred in history to temperatures beyond what that are doing now, prior to any factories etc. Other planets in our solar system are experiences similar changes in line with the spike in radiation from the Sun.