Who would have ever guessed trees store carbon by utilizing the gas of plant photosynthesis, carbon dioxide, and in an “immense, profound” way? From the Institute of Arctic Biology, where they seem to see no positive benefit to this, but worry about fires and insect damages instead. In a previous story, it was shown by NASA that the biosphere is booming thanks to CO2.
World’s forests role in carbon storage immense, profound
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
14 July 2011
FAIRBANKS, Alaska — Until now, scientists were uncertain about how much and where in the world terrestrial carbon is being stored. In the July 14 issue of Science Express, scientists report that, between 1990 and 2007, the world’s forests stored about 2.4 gigatons of carbon per year.
Their results suggest that forests account for almost all of the world’s land-based carbon uptake. Boreal forests are estimated to be responsible for 22 percent of the carbon stored in the forests. A warming climate has the potential to increase fires and insect damage in the boreal forest and reduce its capacity to sequester carbon.
“Our results imply that clearly, forests play a critical role in Earth’s terrestrial carbon balance, and exert considerable control over the evolution of atmospheric carbon dioxide,” said A. David McGuire, co-author and professor of ecology at the University of Alaska Fairbanks Institute of Arctic Biology and co-leader of the USGS Alaska Cooperative Fish and Wildlife Research Unit.
The report includes comprehensive estimates of carbon for the world’s forests based on recent inventory data. The scientists included information on changes in carbon pools from dead wood, harvested wood products, living plants and plant litter, and soils to estimate changes in carbon across countries, regions and continents that represent boreal, temperate and tropical forests.
The authors note that understanding the present and future role of forests in the sequestration and emission of carbon is essential for informed discussions on limiting greenhouse gases.
– 30 –
ADDITIONAL CONTACTS: A. David McGuire, professor of landscape ecology, Institute of Arctic Biology, USGS Alaska Cooperative Fish and Wildlife Research Unit, 907-474-6242, admcguire@alaska.edu
AUTHORS: USDA Forest Service, Newtown Square, PA, USA. Key Laboratory for Earth Surface Processes, Ministry of Education, Peking University, Beijing, 100871 China. State Key Laboratory of Vegetation and Environmental Change, Institute of Botany, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, 100093 China. Woods Hole Research Center, Falmouth, USA. University of Helsinki, Helsinki, Finland. Natural Resources Canada, Canadian Forest Service, Victoria, Canada. School of Geography, University of Leeds, LS2 9JT, UK. International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA), Austria. Global Carbon project, CSIRO Marine and Atmospheric Research, Canberra, Australia. Laboratoire des Sciences du Climat et de l’Environnement (LSCE) CEA-UVSQ-CNRS, Gif sur Yvette, France. Duke University, Durham, NC, USA. Princeton University, Princeton, NJ, USA. U.S. Geological Survey, Alaska Cooperative Fish and Wildlife Research Unit, University of Alaska, Fairbanks, AK, USA. Oak Ridge National Laboratory, Oak Ridge, TN, USA.
NOTE TO EDITORS: Email is the best method for contacting McGuire. The abstract for the paper, “A Large and Persistent Carbon Sink in the World’s Forests,” is available at: www.sciencemag.org/content/early/2011/07/13/science.1201609
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Now they’ll have to direct their scientific attention (and research dollars) to figuring out the reason why trees grown those green things on their branches each year!
Professor of ecology?
Really?
So because we haven’t been able to have informed discussions, all those studies before now have been irrelevant. Thanks!
If I could tell co-author McGuire one thing it would be that vegetation burns. I am personally afraid for our land and home because over the past 50+ years there has been a tremendous addition to the load of fuel in the riparian areas around us. Much of this is because of the removal of cattle and the introduction of homes.
Of interest regarding fires in Canada:
This reminded me of an event (Sunday, September 24th, 1950) when the afternoon sky hazed-over, the sun turned red, and the sky went dark as night. My sister and a couple of cousins have been sorting our recollections about this via email. We lived in western Pennsylvania about 65 miles NNE of Pittsburgh, PA. Cousin Ethel (now age 93) was so taken by the darkening sky that she saved newspaper clippings in daughter Pat’s baby book. With the scant details from those, finding additional information via the “web” is quite easy. Our dark-sky/red-sun event was caused by a number of large fires in northern B.C. and Alberta, 2,000 miles to the west (& north). Scars show on satellite images today.
Another tale:
http://the-red-thread.net/dark-day.html
Search with: Alberta fires 1950; one of many hits
http://www.canada.com/news/1950+monster+fire+burned+into+history/4823685/story.html
The earth’s capacity to lock up carbon in biomass is enormous. Put more carbon in the atmosphere, and plants will say thank you very much…who’d thought it?
A related article appeared in the Edmonton Journal on July 15. See:
http://www.edmontonjournal.com/technology/Forests+saving+world+from+climate+disaster+study/5106677/story.html
Two sample paragraphs:
“That one-third taken up by the forests would otherwise be in the atmosphere,” said Werner Kurz of the Canadian Forest Service, co- author of the report published Thursday in the journal Science.
The oceans suck up another 20 per cent of the emissions, which means “we have basically been getting a 50-per-cent discount on all our fossil fuel emissions,” said Kurz.”
Are they now starting to look for excuses as to why there has been slight cooling for the last ten years?
New title for article: World’s forests role in carbon storage immense, profound, obvious, DUH!
“A warming climate has the potential to increase fires and insect damage in the boreal forest and reduce its capacity to sequester carbon.”
I suppose there is that potential, but have they quantified this damage?
And have they then quantified the potential for increased growth rate for longer growing seasons and northward migration of faster growing and larger biomass species?
Me guesses not.
quote “…that forests account for almost all of the world’s land-based carbon uptake.”
I thought grass uptake was even faster than trees.
I have no idea about the total mass comparison between trees and grass though.
Richard Feynman on how trees and CO2 interact. Excellent explanation that just about anyone can understand:
4:43 video
This is just groundwork for REDD – look it up, its the heart of the global wealth redistribution machine.
I”an H says:
July 18, 2011 at 4:11 pm
In related news, food production is up significantly. Scientists are concerned that this may encourage higher population growth leading to worldwide famine.”
NZ has a lot of forestry.
We’ve just had the highest inflation rate in 21yrs.
The increase in GST ontop of ETS has been a contributing factor.
Shoppers, motorists and mortgage payers have known it for months, and now it’s been confirmed – prices are rising at their fastest rate for 21 years.
Petrol went up by 20 per cent, food by 7 per cent and electricity by 7.8 per cent as the consumer price index rose 5.3 per cent in the year to June 30, the biggest rise since 1990.
http://www.stuff.co.nz/the-press/business/5304781/Highest-inflation-rate-in-21-years
Normally, I would say an article like this is amazing that it would take lord knows how much money and research to come up with such a “profound” conclusion… but I’m finding it pretty typical of the US Govt…
Bugs and Forest Fires? really… Come On..
Vegans better watch their food choices! Every time one dines upon carbon storing plants rather than tastey carbon emitting foods with faces, the earth’s fever increases.
Gee, and all this time I thought that trees simply sucked up carbon through their roots. I mean carbon comes from rocks doesn’t it ?
Yesterday, I had a (very) credible Nobel Physics Laureate tell me that he believed that both coal and oil/natural gas bore distinct signatures of biological origin. So he would not be a supporter of abiotic oil. So before life on earth, presumably we still had screeds of carbon, and it most certainly wasn’t all in the atmosphere as CO2, or even as Methane.
So it would seem natural that trees must suck carbon up through their roots. Who would have guessed they might take it out of the air.
Do you think that the rise in CO2 in the air is many because there are lest trees now than 100 years ago?.
I do as lest trees means lest CO2 is been taken out of the air.
Jeff in Calgary (Alberta) says: “I keep telling people that the easiest way to do buried carbon sequestering is to put tree byproducts into a landfill.”
True, in a sense, but a bit of lateral thinking leads to an even better way:- burn them. The energy generated can replace some energy that would otherwise have been provided from fossil fuels, and two sets of overheads are avoided/deferred. Plus, those unused fossil fuels will be much easier to tap into tomorrow, when needed, than the buried tree byproducts.
Gee, if all the new trees will just be eaten by bugs and/or burned by forest fires, we should pre-empt the little buggers and burn the trees ourselves, for heat and electricity.
Hmm. Study co-author A. David McGuire may want to watch out for Sierra Club hit men! 🙂
Here is a picture of Al Gore sequestering carbon:
How many Nobel Prizes will they hand out for this one?
There are loads of studies by forest institutes that clearly identify the benefits of climate change for wood production and carbon sequestration in boreal climate. See e.g. this study:
Effects of forest management and climate change on
energy biomass and timber production with implications
for carbon stocks and net CO2 exchange in boreal forest
ecosystems
Ashraful Alam
snip…
In summary, the interaction between forest management and climatic conditions has not
only a vital role in maintaining forest growth in forest ecosystems, but also it is highly
relevant for energy biomass production, integrated with timber production and carbon
storage, in the context of the climate change mitigation. In the future, the climate change
may require the current forest management to be adapted in order to utilise the higher
growth rate and thus, increased carbon sequestration and production potential of the forest
ecosystems in boreal conditions. On the other hand, a warmer climate could also increase
carbon loss from the ecosystem through decomposition. Thus, this could partly limit the
climate change benefits in the context of ecosystem carbon exchange and fossil fuel
replacement by energy biomass. In this work, it was found that it is possible to
simultaneously increase the growth and energy biomass and timber production as well as
carbon stocks in the forest ecosystem by changing the forest management in terms of
increased thinning threshold and initial stand density.
http://www.metla.fi/dissertationes/df117.pdf
Sorry about the spelling the word is less.
No sh[*]t Sherlock…
[Language .. Robt]
I have to take umbrage at this – Sh*t IS NOT A SWEAR WORD. It’s actually very disappointing to see such a learned site acts so ignorantly. Did you not know it is an acronym for Store High in Transit? meaning the crate must be above the water line in the hull of the boat.
I don’t understand any of this – isn’t fossil fuel just ancient forests that took their CO2 underground with them? Has this changed? Do trees now eat compost perhaps?
I only recently understood the reason for huge trees and huge animals to graze on them during the dinosaur eras – 5,000 parts per million CO2 in the atmosphere, which gradually became sequestered until we now have only a measly 388ppm. Now these idiots want to get rid of even more CO2, thus eventually depriving us of greenery, grain, grass and shortly afterwards, life as we know it.