Warmist, document thief, and water expert Peter Gleick must be terribly conflicted by this news from USDA.
Trees Using Water More Efficiently as Atmospheric Carbon Dioxide Rises
DURHAM, NH, July 10, 2013 – A study by scientists with the U.S. Forest Service, Harvard University and partners suggests that trees are responding to higher atmospheric carbon dioxide levels by becoming more efficient at using water.
The study, “Increase in forest water-use efficiency as atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations rise,” was published on-line today in the journal Nature. Dave Hollinger, a plant physiologist with the U.S. Forest Service’s Northern Research Station, is a co-author with lead author Trevor Keenan of Harvard University and colleagues from The Ohio State University, Indiana University, and the Institute of Meteorology and Climate in Germany. The article is available at: http://www.nature.com/nature
“Working with others, the Forest Service is developing knowledge that is essential to maintaining healthy, sustainable forests in a changing climate,” said Michael T. Rains, Director of the Northern Research Station. “We are striving to be at the forefront of delivering sound climate science to the public.”
Terrestrial plants remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere through photosynthesis, a process that is accompanied by the loss of water vapor from leaves. The ratio of water loss to carbon gain, or water-use efficiency, is a key characteristic of ecosystem function that is central to the global cycles of water, energy and carbon.
Scientists analyzed direct, long-term measurements of whole-ecosystem carbon and water exchange and found a substantial increase in water-use efficiency in temperate and boreal forests of the Northern Hemisphere over the past two decades.
“Our analysis suggests that rising atmospheric carbon dioxide is having a direct and unexpectedly strong influence on ecosystem processes and biosphere-atmosphere interactions in temperate and boreal forests,” Hollinger said.
How efficient trees are in using water has implications for ecosystem function, services and feedbacks to the climate system. These include enhanced timber yields and improved water availability, which could partially offset the effects of future droughts. However, reduced evapotranspiration, or the combination of evaporation and plant transpiration from the land to the atmosphere, resulting from higher water-use efficiency could lead to higher air temperatures, decreased humidity, and decreased recycling of continental precipitation. This could cause increased continental freshwater runoff, along with drought in parts of the world that rely on water transpired in other regions.
Scientists analyzed data from seven sites in the Midwest and Northeastern United States that are part of the AmeriFlux network including the Forest Service’s Bartlett Experimental Forest in New Hampshire and the Howland Cooperating Experimental Forest in Maine and expanded the analysis to 14 additional forested sites in temperate and boreal regions. . Flux towers at these sites measure fluctuations in carbon dioxide uptake and water loss. The Northern Research Station operates flux towers at five experimental forests; in addition to the Bartlett and Howland Forests this work is continuing at the Silas Little Experimental Forest in New Jersey, the Marcell Experimental Forest in Grand Rapids, Minn., and the Baltimore Long-term Ecological Research Site.
The mission of the U.S. Forest Service is to sustain the health, diversity, and productivity of the nation’s forests and grasslands to meet the needs of present and future generations. The agency has either a direct or indirect role in stewardship of about 80 percent of our nation’s forests; 850 million acres including 100 million acres of urban forests where most Americans live. The mission of the Forest Service’s Northern Research Station is to improve people’s lives and help sustain the natural resources in the Northeast and Midwest through leading-edge science and effective information delivery.
blackadderthe4th says:
July 11, 2013 at 3:32 pm
@ur momisugly dbstealey says:
July 11, 2013 at 3:12 pm
‘Wake up. You are a victim of self-serving government propaganda’, so who is Mr Paranoia then? Because if they are lying, they’ll be found out! Pretty damn quick!
==================
Nobody is looking.
I have to agree with CEH above.
If CO2 was limiting growth, then it’s plausible that more water will be used as more CO2 allows more growth; which in turn would result in more water being transpired.
Those who deduce that ‘more efficient use of water” results in less growth are assuming that there is some other, governing limit to growth than the availability of water and CO2 that prevents them from growing more vigorously than at present. Unless that limit is presented, that’s an argument from ignorance.
As for the US Forest Service; those outside of the USA are well aware that the purpose of the Service if to produce wood pellets for burning in the new furnaces of the Drax power station in the UK.
It’s a power station that currently burns up to 9 million (metric) tons of coal a year; for 7% of the UK’s electricity production. For the same amount of heat (for the same amount of electricity), takes about 2.5 times the tonnage in wood. In round numbers, North America would need to export about 25 million tons of timber for just that one power station. Most of it has to be “virgin timber”; not just low-Q waste. If the UK goes “all biomass”; then the tonnage to be shipped to the UK every year could easily exceed 200 million tons.
Complete “sustainability” calculations are left as an exercise to the reader. For a start, peak yield rates for forestry in the US are around 80 cu ft/year/acre or about a metric ton per year per acre (density about 30 lb per cu ft). Supplying a “full biomass” Drax would therefore require the clear-felling of 25 million acres of North American forests every year; increasing over time as the best locations are harvested away.
johanna says:
July 11, 2013 at 4:56 pm
Miketheforester said, inter alia:
But I guess they have to do this to keep the grants coming. By the way, the biggest threats to our native forests are invasive plants and insects as well as destructive high-grade logging (taking the best and leaving the rest). So I would suggest it would be far more productive if the forest researchers concentrated on those issues rather than the theory of CO2 catastrophism.
———————–
“Mike, thanks for your comment. Could you explain a bit further about your statement that selective logging (“taking the best and leaving the rest”) somehow threatens native forests?”
Mike can, and likely will speak for himself, but as another forester on this list, let me give you the basis for this statement. “Taking the best and leaving the rest” is known as high grading, and results in just a few entries in dysgenic selection and degradation of the genetic resources of the stand.
On the other hand, clearcutting is genetically neutral at worst. If relying upon natural regeneration, the next stand will be genetically the same as the one harvested by clearcutting. However, clearcuts are usually replanted, more and more with genetically improved seedlings, so the genetic resources are upgraded.
Selective logging is a terrible choice for shade intolerant species, so these species will, in time, disappear from the landscape, replaced by shade tolerant species. Oh and by the way, two of our most valuable timber species, Douglas-fir and loblolly pine, are shade intolerant.
Lots of hockey sticks with all this new wood eh? and wait for the Suzuki types to blame CO2 for the flooding, see the trees dont suck it up now with the extra CO2! be fair to me its better science that the agw crowd use (still wrong but at least I realise!!!!)
Perhaps the eleven percent increase in vegetation reported in a recent post has other knock on effects than a decrease in humidity, perhaps the outcome will be the same or the opposite.
Unless the decrease in humidity per ‘average leaf area’ was greater than 11 percent of the original,due to less transpiration, the expected result looking at just those two criteria would be an increase in the relative humidity of the atmosphere.This would by the models we keep hearing about induce an enhancement of the greenhouse gas water vapour leading to global warming.
The more luxurient vegetation would harbour more microorganisms, leading to more efficient seeding of clouds above the forest, triggered by aerosol nidus formation.
This would enhance cooling and precipitation above the forest canopy, leading to global cooling as the vegetation increased.
Albedo would alter.
Another poster in another thread pointed out that the increase of biomass converts energy from the sun into stored energy, which would dampen the rise in temperature of the earth’s surface.
Society of American Foresters
http://www.safnet.org/fp/fp-newsDetails.cfm?topicID=104
Back in 1981, President Ronald Reagan caused an uproar when he warned that trees “cause more pollution than automobiles do.” Go ahead, snicker. I sure did. But recently I discovered that he was actually right (albeit for all the wrong reasons)…
http://www.mnn.com/home-blog/guest-columnist/blogs/surprising-pollution-problem-too-many-trees
TEXAS A&M FOREST SERVICE SURVEY SHOWS 301 MILLION TREES KILLED BY DROUGHT
http://texasforestservice.tamu.edu/main/popup.aspx?id=16509
Receding drought leaves deadly touch among Arkansas trees
http://www.uaex.edu/news/may2013/0501ArkDroughtTreeDeaths.html
Dry, weakened pine trees more susceptible to wilt – Midwest Producer
http://m.midwestproducer.com/news/regional/dry-weakened-pine-trees-more-susceptible-to-wilt/article_6dd85ad8-e96d-11e2-ba1f-001a4bcf887a.html
World’s biggest, oldest trees are dying: research
http://www.livemint.com/Politics/pNHhbUCCh0qKsqvjmxM8xK/Worlds-biggest-oldest-trees-are-dying-research.html
Drought in 1930s Agriculture
http://www.livinghistoryfarm.org/farminginthe30s/water_01.html
Diseased trees are source of climate-changing gas
http://news.yale.edu/2012/08/08/diseased-trees-are-source-climate-changing-gas
Forests and water could be doomed in 2060
http://www.smokymountainnews.com/outdoors/item/9562-forests-and-water-could-be-doomed-in-2060
Just some interesting things I came across. Travelling this country, I have never seen so many dead trees. Been bucket brigades to save our trees, again. Vegetation in the Ozarks is extremely dry, again.
DesertYote says:
July 11, 2013 at 9:08 am
“How efficient trees are in using water has implications for ecosystem function, services and feedbacks to the climate system. These include enhanced timber yields and improved water availability, which could partially offset the effects of future droughts. However, reduced evapotranspiration, or the combination of evaporation and plant transpiration from the land to the atmosphere, resulting from higher water-use efficiency could lead to higher air temperatures, decreased humidity, and decreased recycling of continental precipitation. This could cause increased continental freshwater runoff, along with drought in parts of the world that rely on water transpired in other regions.”
Serial “could”s leading to the inevitable disaster B-movie. Pathetic and mendacious.
I think these people KNOW that they are lying and that it is just for pernicious political advantage, understanding nature is no-where in these people’s minds.
Are they too stupid to understand that their linear catholic logic depends on the number and size of plants staying the same, an utterly flawed assumption? Do they not understand that an ecosystem can respond by change in growth rate, size and number of plants? Or do they hope that enough people will not notice this fact so their deliberate deception will succeed?
This is how “science” was done before the renaissance, before Galileo, before Newton, the scientific method and experimental deduction. Politically influential blow-hards sitting in armchairs pontificating philosophically on how they thought the world operates. probably using the word “could” a lot of times also. This is what is at stake here, the foundation of the scientific method and reasoning is being undermined. Deliberately.
The evidence is of deserts greening from rising CO2. More efficient stomatal uptake of CO2 means less water loss in a mechanistic, reductionist sense locally at the stomata itself. But what else happens? The plant grows faster and becomes bigger, having more leaves. More plants grow in marginal habitats where they could not grow before. To the integrated result in the real world is MORE water transpiration, not less, and transpiration by plants in areas where none was happening previously.
This same logical fallacy lies behind the environmentalist idea that increased energy efficiency will reduce the need for electrical power generation. Politicians and greenies lamely trot out the notion that part of the solution to energy shortage is energy efficiency. (They cause the energy shortage by green policies). But it is well established that, in economics, increased energy use does not lead to reduced energy consumption – in fact the reverse. More efficiency leads to growth and diversification in the ways that it is economical to use energy.
The real world is complex but can be studied by observation and deduction. These serial “could-could-could” linear fallacies, cut off from real world reality, are easy to demolish.
DesertYote says:
July 11, 2013 at 9:08 am
“How efficient trees are in using water has implications for ecosystem function, services and feedbacks to the climate system. These include enhanced timber yields and improved water availability, which could partially offset the effects of future droughts. However, reduced evapotranspiration, or the combination of evaporation and plant transpiration from the land to the atmosphere, resulting from higher water-use efficiency could lead to higher air temperatures, decreased humidity, and decreased recycling of continental precipitation. This could cause increased continental freshwater runoff, along with drought in parts of the world that rely on water transpired in other regions.”
The spin is making me dizzy…
This is indeed spin of the worst kind. Serial “could”s leading to the inevitable disaster B-movie. Pathetic and mendacious.
I think these people KNOW that they are lying and that it is just for pernicious political advantage, understanding nature is no-where in these people’s minds.
Are they too stupid to understand that their linear catholic logic depends on the number and size of plants staying the same, an utterly flawed assumption? Do they not understand that an ecosystem can respond by change in growth rate, size and number of plants? Or do they hope that enough people will not notice this fact so their deliberate deception will succeed?
This is how “science” was done before the renaissance, before Galileo, before Newton, the scientific method and experimental deduction. Politically influential blow-hards sitting in armchairs pontificating philosophically on how they thought the world operates. probably using the word “could” a lot of times also. This is what is at stake here, the foundation of the scientific method and reasoning is being undermined. Deliberately.
The evidence is of deserts greening from rising CO2. More efficient stomatal uptake of CO2 means less water loss in a mechanistic, reductionist sense locally at the stomata itself. But what else happens? The plant grows faster and becomes bigger, having more leaves. More plants grow in marginal habitats where they could not grow before. To the integrated result in the real world is MORE water transpiration, not less, and transpiration by plants in areas where none was happening previously.
This same logical fallacy lies behind the environmentalist idea that increased energy efficiency will reduce the need for electrical power generation. Politicians and greenies lamely trot out the notion that part of the solution to energy shortage is energy efficiency. (They cause the energy shortage by green policies). But it is well established that, in economics, increased energy use does not lead to reduced energy consumption – in fact the reverse. More efficiency leads to growth and diversification in the ways that it is economical to use energy.
The real world is complex but can be studied by observation and deduction. These serial “could-could-could” linear fallacies, cut off from real world reality, are easy to demolish.
LK Miller, thanks. But I am puzzled by your statement:
“Selective logging is a terrible choice for shade intolerant species, so these species will, in time, disappear from the landscape, replaced by shade tolerant species. Oh and by the way, two of our most valuable timber species, Douglas-fir and loblolly pine, are shade intolerant.”
I don’t understand how reducing the canopy (i.e., increasing the penetration of sunlight) by selective logging is bad for “shade intolerant species”. I am not having a shot at you or Mike, just hoping that you can educate me about something that you are obviously much more knowledgeable about than I am.
Also, while I take your point about removing the best genetic material from a forest, surely a mature tree has already had several seasons of producing seed, which for a lot of species can survive for many years until the conditions are right for it to sprout.
Thanks in advance for answering my probably dumb questions. 🙂
Below are other papers showing:
a) The Earth craves more co2
b) Co2 is too low by geologic standards
I thought more trees meant more rain. Anyway, more water vapour leads to a hothouse. Less water vapour also leads to a hothouse. So does average water vapour. No matter what we do we are finished. It’s all over I tells ya.
just saw a commentary in nature about the article http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/vaop/ncurrent/full/nature12411.html
johanna says:
July 12, 2013 at 2:42 am
LK Miller, thanks. But I am puzzled by your statement:
“Selective logging is a terrible choice for shade intolerant species, so these species will, in time, disappear from the landscape, replaced by shade tolerant species. Oh and by the way, two of our most valuable timber species, Douglas-fir and loblolly pine, are shade intolerant.”
I don’t understand how reducing the canopy (i.e., increasing the penetration of sunlight) by selective logging is bad for “shade intolerant species”. I am not having a shot at you or Mike, just hoping that you can educate me about something that you are obviously much more knowledgeable about than I am.
Also, while I take your point about removing the best genetic material from a forest, surely a mature tree has already had several seasons of producing seed, which for a lot of species can survive for many years until the conditions are right for it to sprout.
Thanks in advance for answering my probably dumb questions. 🙂
*****************************
No harm, no foul. Shade intolerance means just that – shade intolerant species (aka pioneer species) have a fairly strong requirement for full sunlight, or nearly full. While there can be some germination of seed from shade intolerants in partial shade, if there is a seed supply from shade tolerant species, pioneer species are unable to compete successfully. The shift doesn’t happen overnight, but selective logging (which really is a bastardization of the “selection system” of silviculture) is rarely executed properly, mainly because it requires knowledge of the true ages of the trees in the stand. We sometimes assume that bigger trees are older than smaller trees, but this isn’t always the case. Thus, most selective harvests fall back toward “diameter limit” cuts – which remove the larger trees and leave the smaller. Over time, this almost always results in genetic degradation of the stand.
In a good seed year, a stand of trees will produce millions of seeds per acre. However, the overwhelming majority never get the chance to germinate. Many are eaten by mammals and rodents, many fall onto unsuitable seed beds, and some die from fungal pathogens. Also, for almost all forest trees, the seed doesn’t “store” in the ground much past the first year after seed fall. Thus, it needs to germinate the next spring (and then fight the huge fight to actually become another tree of seed bearing age), or it is gone – taking with it the genetic component of its parent.
This is the lushest spring greenege I have ever seen in my part of the country…Pacific NW…high mountain plain desert…it is still green…grasses, weeds…flowers are lush…and bigger than normal…more vapour in the aire, also….this is unprecedented.
johanna says:
“Mike, thanks for your comment. Could you explain a bit further about your statement that selective logging (“taking the best and leaving the rest”) somehow threatens native forests?”
LKMiller – thanks for the great answer to Johanna’s question. In fact destructive high-grade logging aka “liquidation cutting” is worse than clearcutting but never gets the attention it deserves.
For more info on liquidation cutting see my blog at http://northquabbinforestry.com/liquidation-cutting/
Thanks LK and Mike.
Oh, THIS is just WRONG:
This completely ignores the increased greening that has been happening in areas around deserts.
It ALSO ignores looking at just WHAT IS HAPPENING in evapotranspiration at the cellular level. I don’t know what the answer is, but I recently moved to an area where the evapotranspiration is a BIG deal. Plants that close off their pores (as it were) survive here over the long dry season; those that don’t, don’t make it without help from dastardly, planet-killing humans.
But it also doesn’t look at the bigger picture:
If the plants cahnge their evapotranspiration cellularly because of increased CO2/warmth, then it is OBVIOUS that the plants can change it back the other way, too. As in adaptation. Or simply that is what plants normally do in changing environments – they alter their processes.
And one more thing:
“…could lead to higher air temperatures, decreased humidity, and decreased recycling of continental precipitation”
“…This could cause increased continental freshwater runoff, along with drought…”
I am reading Greenpeace co-founder Patrick Moore’s book “Confessions of a Greenpeace Dropout,” in which he says
As a first-year science major at the University of British Columbia I was lucky enough to enroll in a course offered by the English faculty, aimed at teaching critical thinking to science students. We took a copy of Time magazine and deconstructed it from cover to cover. The lesson I remember best is, never believe an article that has the words may or might in the first sentence. If you see a sentence with may in it, read it again but add or may not as in, “Chemical X may or may not cause cancer. [Kindle Locations 537-544]”
So, going through the motions, re-wording those sentences, they reaad:
“…could – or could maybe not – lead to higher air temperatures, decreased humidity, and decreased recycling of continental precipitation”
“…This could – or could maybe not – cause increased continental freshwater runoff, along with drought…”
Jimbo says:
July 12, 2013 at 5:48 am
I thought more trees meant more rain. Anyway, more water vapour leads to a hothouse. Less water vapour also leads to a hothouse. So does average water vapour. No matter what we do we are finished. It’s all over I tells ya.
If earth is a hothouse, climate science is a madhouse. Full of hotheads. Looks like its produced by the same people who make Jackass, i.e. Dickhouse.
Steve Garcia says:
July 12, 2013 at 11:57 pm
Oh, THIS is just WRONG:
However, reduced evapotranspiration, or the combination of evaporation and plant transpiration from the land to the atmosphere, resulting from higher water-use efficiency could lead to higher air temperatures, decreased humidity, and decreased recycling of continental precipitation. This could cause increased continental freshwater runoff, along with drought in parts of the world that rely on water transpired in other regions.
This completely ignores the increased greening that has been happening in areas around deserts.
Agree, I think you’re saying the same essentially as my previous comment. I accidentally left out two links,
Greening of the deserts from CO2
The same logical fallacy applied to energy efficiency
Gaia invented humans to reverse the suicidal sequestration of CO2 by plants and shellfish.
100% of the O2 in the atmosphere was stripped out of primordial CO2 by photosynthetic plants.
It is the Staff of Life.
“We’re still very concerned about what rising levels of atmospheric carbon dioxide mean for the planet,” Richardson cautioned. “There is little doubt that as carbon dioxide continues to rise — and last month we just passed a critical milestone, 400 ppm, for the first time in human history — rising global temperatures and changes in rainfall patterns will, in coming decades, have very negative consequences for plant growth in many ecosystems around the world.”
healthier trees, more greenage=more oxygen…more vapourous air….http://www.theregister.co.uk/2013/07/11/co2_greens_the_deserts/…if this research is correct…the Earth could turn sub-tropical.
http://messagetoeagle.com/arcticgreening.php#.Ue4BvY3VCc0….we are not talking about man made C02…which is basically polluting and dirty….natural C02 …from volcanic activity…deep sea vents….rotting organics….