From the Department of Obvious Science and the USDA Forest Service – Pacific Northwest Research Station, comes this shocking headline:
Washington’s forests will lose stored carbon as area burned by wildfire increases
Even small increases in area burned could have significant impacts on carbon storage
Forests in the Pacific Northwest store more carbon than any other region in the United States, but our warming climate may undermine their storage potential.
A new study conducted by the U.S. Forest Service’s Pacific Northwest Research Station and the Climate Impacts Group at the University of Washington has found that, by 2040, parts of Washington State could lose as much as a third of their carbon stores, as an increasing area of the state’s forests is projected to be burned by wildfire. The study—published in the July 2012 issue of the journal Ecological Applications—is the first to use statistical models and publicly available Forest Inventory and Analysis data to estimate the effects of a warming climate on carbon storage and fluxes on Washington’s forests.
“When considering the use of forests to store carbon, it will be critical to consider the increasing risk of wildfire,” said Crystal Raymond, a research biologist based at the station’s Pacific Wildland Fire Sciences Laboratory and lead author of the study. “Especially in the West, where climate-induced changes in fire are expected to be a key agent of change.”
Trees remove and sequester carbon from the atmosphere, in the form of carbon dioxide, acting as important stores, or “sinks,” of carbon that help to offset its accumulation in the atmosphere. When trees and other woody material in the forest are burned by fire, they release carbon back to the atmosphere, mostly as carbon dioxide, where it may once again act as a greenhouse gas that promotes warming. This land-atmosphere exchange of carbon is increasingly of interest to land managers seeking ways to actively manage forests to store carbon and help mitigate greenhouse gases.
To explore what effect climate-driven changes in wildfire might have on the ability of Washington’s forests to act as carbon sinks, Raymond and station research ecologist Don McKenzie used a novel approach. They combined published forest-inventory data, fire-history data, and statistical models of area burned to estimate historical and future carbon carrying capacity of three regions in Washington—the Western Cascades, the Eastern Cascades, and the Okanogan Highlands—based on potential forest productivity and projections of 21st century area burned.
“Forests on both the eastern and western slopes of the Cascade Range will lose carbon stored in live biomass because area burned across the state is expected to increase,” Raymond said. “Even small increases in area burned can have large consequences for carbon stored in living and dead biomass.”
The researchers looked at live biomass, which includes living trees and vegetation, as well as nonliving biomass in the form of coarse woody debris, which includes dead standing trees and downed logs. Both contribute to the carbon cycle, but in different ways—living biomass removes carbon from the atmosphere as vegetation grows, and coarse woody debris releases carbon over time as the material decomposes.
Raymond and McKenzie projected forests of the Western Cascades to be most sensitive to climate-driven increases in fire, losing anywhere from 24 to 37 percent of their live biomass and from 15 to 25 percent of their coarse woody debris biomass by 2040. These forests store significant carbon and typically burn with high severity, killing many trees and consuming coarse woody debris.
On the other side of the mountains, the researchers also projected a decrease in live biomass by 2040—of anywhere between 17 and 26 percent in the Eastern Cascades and in the Okanogan Highlands—but no change in coarse woody debris biomass, or possibly even an increase, because coarse woody debris biomass increases as trees are killed by fire and subsequent low-severity fires burn only a small portion of it.
“Changes in fire regimes in a warming climate can limit our potential to use forests in the Pacific Northwest to store additional carbon and to reduce atmospheric carbon dioxide,” Raymond said.
Understanding the possible effects of more area burned by fire can help managers decide whether forests need to be actively managed for their fire potential to minimize carbon loss.
To read more about the study, visit http://www.esajournals.org/doi/abs/10.1890/11-1851.1.
The Pacific Northwest Research Station is headquartered in Portland, Oregon. It has 11 laboratories and centers located in Alaska, Oregon, and Washington and about 425 employees.
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From SOS Forests:
Data are from the National Interagency Fire Center.
There are some evident trends.
1. Total acres burned has increased from the 1960’s to this Century, from an average of 4.6 million acres per year to 6.8 million acres per year.
2. Average acres per fire has also increased, from a low in the 1970’s of 21 acres per fire to 83 acres per fire in this Century.
3. Number of fires per year has decreased from a high (1975-1984) of nearly 190,000 fires per year to 83,000 fires per year this Century.
Fewer but larger fires this Century, and more acres burned in total.
To me this suggests a legacy of poor fuel management rather than “global warming”.
What will the global warming farrago have to say about Mother Nature? She is constantly starting fires all over the world. Will she get sued?
Cyclical fires on Earth, 2000 to 2010, as detected by Terra and Aqua satellites
Re: “Biochar” using a microwave.
Microwaves use electricity. Reflex Klystrons or Magnetrons are the typical generating device. When you get up into the higher power levels, the energy consumption goes up also.
How much coal or natural gas must be used to generate the electricity to drive one of these ovens? I’ve seen $65 per ton noted in this thread. Does that include the fuel to cut the tree down and section it so that it fits in the oven? How about the cost in fuel to drag/transport it to the oven? What about the wages for the loggers and oven operators?
Interestingly enough the statistics in the SOS Forests graphs above seem to indicate a sort of paradigm shift in Acres burned and average acerage per fire since the early 70’s as well as in the numbers of wildfires through the 70’s. This appears to coincide with the Forestry Department’s “Let-It-Burn” policy of 1968 and later adoption in 1972
http://www.x98ruhf.net/yellowstone/fire.htm
“The “natural burn” policy
The 1988 fire season in Yellowstone began when a single lightning strike set a small group of pines ablaze on June 22. Officials weren’t initially worried. A Yellowstone Public Affairs Specialist said “We knew it had started naturally, and we assumed the summer rains would keep it in check. What we didn’t know was that [the] summer was going to be one of the driest and windiest since the park was established in 1872.” The fires were initially allowed to burn under the controversial “natural burn” policy. This policy allowed fires to run their natural course as long as they were not caused by human activity (such as fires started by improperly extinguished camp fires or careless use of cigarettes), and as long as the fires did not threaten human lives, property, endangered species, or natural features. The origins of this policy extend back to 1968 when the National Park Service officially recognized that fire was essential for the maintenance of an ecosystem. A policy was adapted in 1972 that reflected this position”
The idea of man made or controlled carbon sequestration is beyond stupid. It is stupid to the nth power.
And yet human beings have been controlling fires in the Pacific Northwest since the ice melted 12,000 years ago. And longer than that on other continents.
The idea that climate governs forest fires is laughable. Tropical forests burn quite nicely. Amazon savannas are testament to millennia of human-controlled fire regimes. Anthropogenic fire has dominated Africa for 1.8 million years or so.
I know, it’s hard to get your mind around the notion that human beings were effective masters of fire and of their landscapes long before inept Europeans bumbled over here. Not what you were taught in your progressive public school, from which mental confines you have never escaped. But the reality of history is that human beings have always dictated fire wherever they have lived. Which is almost everywhere.
As for carbon sequestration, forests around here fix carbon at the rate of a couple of tons per acre per year. If that carbon had gotten stored on the forest floor over the last 12,000 years, it would be 1,000 feet deep. But it isn’t, which shoots that ridiculous theory in the head.
The carbon cycles. It comes in via photosynthesis; it goes out via fire and decay. Temperate forests of today are not Carboniferous swamps. No coal building up. The carbon cycles. The paper is indeed novel in this respect: it proposes that carbon cycling is something new — which it manifestly is not.
I presume you all know the same CO2 release happens in Brazil when they burn the cane fields as part of the process to produce Ethanol. Growing up in Hawaii the cane field fires were a major source of entertainment for us kids from Portland, OR. We’d seen only the teepee burners (beehive burners as they’re called in Kanuckistan) there. So very controlled yet still exciting. We had no idea the oceans would rise to our rooftops as a result. Now, 60 years on, I’m still waiting for that inundation. And rocket belts and flying automobiles. More science lies, I guess.
The weather thus far this year in Washington State is not conducive to high fire indexes – cool and rainy. It’s just creating thicker underbrush for larger future fires. So which is better: smaller, frequent fires on relatively young forest stands, or a few larger fires on older growth?
One must also understand that a fully mature forest is a net zero in carbon absorption from the atmosphere. Once it is fully mature, there is as much decaying matter releasing CO2 as there is new growth. It reaches equilibrium. A growing forest will be a CO2 sponge with its rate of total absorption rapidly increasing and then dropping off as it reaches maturity. What that means is that in addition to the carbon now sequestered in charcoal for thousands of years, we will not see a burst of new growth that will absorb more CO2 over the next 200 years than it otherwise would have if left in its previous state. The end result will be an overall net reduction in atmospheric CO2.
Say you have some quantity of CO2 in biomass that we will call X. After the fire burns, much of that carbon is deposited into the atmosphere but some of it (Y) is left as charcoal which remains in the ground. When the biomass again reaches quantity X, the amount of carbon in that forest is now X+Y. Another fire of the same size would then create 2Y amount of sequestered carbon and so on. Forest fires are net reducers of atmospheric carbon and speed up the process of removing CO2 from the air.
Australia’s Voldemort tax (even our Government ads for our carbon tax do not mention it by name) is planned to pay overseas green schemes billions of dollars to grow more trees. If they burn, do we get our money back?
Urederra said on July 24, 2012 at 1:15 pm:
And here I thought phlogiston was released to make comments on WUWT, which I’ve read.
😉
Don’t worry the rising seas will put out the fires.
I renewed the electrics in a friends house and my mate did the plumbing. After we finished and he had payed us I said ” Don’t worry if the electrics catch fire his leaky plumbing will put it out in no time!”
Never mind the ‘released carbon’ (dioxide!) but many tree species depend on fire to help reproduction. Fires clear ground areas, letting in light to increase low growing species which helps the indigenous animal species. Wildfires are not new but been burning on the planet since plants developed. We now have thousands of plant species so wildfires are good not bad for the environment.
Didn’t we start intentionally setting prescribed burns after Yellowstone? The whole reason Yellowstone was so bad was we put out every little fire (most/all caused by lightning) and messing with Mother Nature’s house cleaning.
It’s funny how since the world has been warming since the end of the Little Ice Age boreal forest fires have been in decline. NEVER let evidence get in the way of a good fairy tale.
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/06/27/more-heated-media-prepping-tomorrow/#comment-1020170
Just as burning trees release more co2 so the trees that grow in their place will…………
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Louis says:
July 24, 2012 at 2:57 pm
In one day, one large tree can lift up to 100 gallons of water out of the ground and discharge it into the air.
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Without researching, for a large tree, I think you’re about an order of magnitude too small.
@Gary Young Pearse says:
“I was a geologist with the Geol. Survey of Nigeria in the 60s working up in Northern Nigeria.dry savannah. Global warm was already a fact of life with temps in the 40s in the dry season. ”
Well, the drying cycle of the Sahel was starting in the 60’s. I presume you have heard in the media how the Sahel has been advancing into the desert, northward, since about 1983? No? Well, that is amazing. I wonder how such a remarkable, blessed change of events could have been missed by a balanced approach to environmental news.
“During the short rainy season, if you saw a drop of rain fall and you were 20 metres from shelter you were soaked in seconds and could barely see the shelter.”
Thermals. Make good, short, sharp showers. During droughts First Nations in Canada used well-timed grass fires to induce thermals to seed clouds with PM to make it rain.
“The trees in the scattered trees in savannah grassland (called orchard bush because of the spacing) were fireproof! Now why do you suppose that is?”
Fireproof trees like blue gum, many acacia varieties and thick-barked evergreens are proof of evolutionary advantages to deal with frequent fires.
Interestingly, in the centre and west of Tanzania there used to be no trees in the grasslands and no tsetse flies. After the great red water disease epidemic of 1893-95 killed about 95% of the cattle (which were keeping the trees down), thornveld encroachment started. A tsetse fly only travels about 50m in open sunshine (they hate sunlight – get sunburned) so they were not a problem. Once the trees got re-established sleeping sickness (once again?) became a huge problem. Nothing to do with temperature or rainfall, just cattle v.s. trees.
It is possible increased rainfall with a gently warming climate may play a role but it is so cyclical it is next to impossible to separate the cycles and the trend. All said and done, traditional forests are very fire resistant, pine plantations (etc) not so much.
http://news.stanford.edu/news/2012/july/australia-hunting-fire-071212.html
Arthur Hughes says:
July 24, 2012 at 5:54 pm
We all agree that buildup of C02 is dangerous for the planet. The problem is that few have come up with a viable solution that will be adopted by enough nations….
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What WE?
I am all for releasing as much CO2 as possible!
I LIKE a greener world.
I LIKE plants that are drought resistant.
I LIKE C3 plants that form most of our food and were in danger of CO2 starvation.
Heck, I LIKE to keep on breathing and CO2 is absolutely necessary for animal respiration.
What I DO NOT LIKE is the return to glaciation, an absolute given. Interglacials are Russian roulette glaciation is not. link
What I DO NOT LIKE is the swindlers and conmen using propaganda to steal from me and every one else! Here are just a few links: link and link and link and link and link and link and link and link
The danger from “Global Warming” is “Hypothetical” The DEATHS from “Global Warming” policies ARE VERY VERY REAL!
The urge to save humanity is almost always a false front for the urge to rule. Government is actually the worst failure of civilized man. There has never been a really good one, and even those that are most tolerable are arbitrary, cruel, grasping, and unintelligent. –H. L. Mencken
I’ve read that close to 40 million acres a year burned during the 1930s, quite a lot more than currently.
Also, it seems ironic that, for all their supposed love of carbon-sequestering trees, environmentalists have blocked attempts to spray them for the beetles. Not only would this save literally millions of trees, it would also make forest less susceptible to fire. Dead trees dry out quickly and are a major hazard. But the spray contains small amounts of DDT, so by definition it must be evil. Pity.
John Trigge (in Oz) says:
July 24, 2012 at 10:50 pm
Australia’s Voldemort tax (even our Government ads for our carbon tax do not mention it by name) is planned to pay overseas green schemes billions of dollars to grow more trees. If they burn, do we get our money back?
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You have all those ?mothballed? desal plants so why don’t you Aussies grow your own trees and get the bucks from the Watermelon gov’t? I am sure you could get a really great lobby going for that idea (Snicker) Hey, I bet you could even get grants for the project from the US government! Just start an NGO and have it pay you $$$ as president. A win win even if the idea flops.
Which is why I said many years ago, that planting trees is not an offset for CO2 emissions – because these trees will be used for a number of years, as paper or wood, but then end up rotting or burned. Thus the CO2 is released again. Trees are only a temporary offset at best.
Trees can only be a complete offset for CO2 if they are buried forever, which is not the plan. So the Carbon Offsetting plan is flawed from the beginning, and we are all being duped by the unscrupulous.
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I remember hearing in a soil science class 15 years ago that a tall grass prairie sequesters more carbon than a jungle. I think crosspatch nailed it. Fire and non-decomposing charcoal.
Hhhmmmm. More fires means more charcoal. Charcoal becomes inaccessible to nutrient cycling and so stores carbon more or less permanently.
A forest on the other hand has limits on its carbon storage capacity as plants grow, die and decompose.
So I say it ain’t necessarily so.
Bah. Since sequestering carbon is a complete concocted pointless irrelevancy, who the flipping frack gives a flying flart?