Will Climate Talks Give Trees the Brush Off?

As the Great White North, at its highest latitudes, continues to thaw over time, scientists are hoping that world leaders meeting next month in Copenhagen will look upon the same region with a different shade of color in mind.

Calling it the planet's "Great Green Carbon Sink," they believe the rugged boreal forest should be factored into strategies for slowing climate change and put on a par with attention being paid to forests in the tropics.

In a report just released by the Canadian Boreal Initiative, titled "The Carbon The World Forgot," a trio of conservation biologists suggests the vast belt of forest and bogs enwrapping Canada, Scandinavia and Russia has largely been overlooked as important catchments for Earth-warming carbon dioxide.

"They're vital natural tools that can be employed to help solve a human problem," says Steve Kallick with the International Boreal Conservation Campaign, which has won the support of 1,500 scientists endorsing added protection.

When ecologists started poring over field research and peer-reviewed literature pertaining to the circumboreal region, they made a startling discovery, Mr. Kallick explains.

This portion of the globe that covers 11 percent of the Earth's land surface actually stores twice as much carbon as lush forests in the tropics.

Astoundingly, over 208 billion tons of carbon are estimated to be stored in forests and peat bogs of the north--equivalent to 26 years worth of the world's total carbon emissions from fossil fuel burning.

For a while, the value of boreal forests has been treated as an afterthought, with emphasis given to tropical swaths in Latin America, Africa and Asia because of their rich biological diversity and the rate of logging and burning taking place to make way for agricultural crops. Changes in land use, which includes removing or burning of plant material, contributes to 20 percent of annual greenhouse gas emissions.

In the tropics, ongoing fragmentation is linked to increased desertification and loss of species. Warming is only expected to exacerbate those trends in the coming decades.

Those issues are important, Kallick says, but within the context of climate change, protecting the boreal makes good economic sense when set against an expensive backdrop of necessary action. In addition, it, too, is a region where conservation can be directly linked to empowering people left behind in the global economy.

A significant percentage of boreal Canada resides on homelands for aboriginal First Nation bands whose stewardship practices have huge implications for the environment beyond climate.

Wildlife such as caribou, wolves, bears and moose thrive in the boreal wilderness. Of continental significance is that more than five billion migratory birds, covering 300 species including huntable waterfowl, breed and nest there. Those avians are shared with Americans as they fly across the U.S. between summer and winter ranges.

Scientists say huge dividends in carbon storage can be achieved simply by leaving the boreal alone and allowing nature to do its job.

But in exchange for asking native peoples to refrain from felling forests for timber or draining peat swamps, many believe they should be compensated in whatever carbon cap or trade system is discussed in Denmark.

"As people in some countries sit on top of vast oil reserves and are compensated well for developing them, the people of the north are sitting on top of sequestered carbon and should be compensated for not developing it," Kallick says.

"They are doing the world a great service by stewarding the carbon. Comparable to the indigenous peoples in the tropics, they too live in poverty without the economic benefits of resource development."

Surprisingly, perhaps, that premise has met with relatively little organized resistance so far.

Although Canada--and, in particular, the western province of Alberta--has taken a beating for tar sands oil production that has caused massive landscape destruction and air pollution, this report praises the efforts of some Canadian province premiers.

The top elected leaders in both Ontario and Quebec, Dalton McGuinty and Jean Charest, recently stepped forward with unprecedented landscape protection plans, embraced by members of resource extraction industry and First Nations communities.

Some 400 million acres--a land area four times the size of California or equivalent to 200 Yellowstones-- are targeted for conservation in Canada with over half of it being placed off limits to development.

There's a reason why the boreal forest is synonymous with moose, which thrive in moist, swampy habitats. The boreal region is filled with peat bogs where vegetation accumulates when it dies and slowly decomposes in the colder conditions. The amount of carbon contained in soil, submerged underwater in bogs, and sequestered in tree roots dwarfs the amount found above ground in tree trunks and branches.

The only things likely to cause release of the carbon is drying and burning of both bogs and forests by fire.

As Kallick notes, the more unbroken stretches of habitat that exist, the better the chances of species survival. In the event of large beetle kill or fire, animals that dwell in affected areas can simply move to an adjacent area. However, when only patchworks of habitat remain in the aftermath of industrial logging, the probability of species persistence drops dramatically.
The bigger the size of protected areas, the more resilient an ecosystem is to swift and severe impacts of warming.

Kallick and his colleagues don't expect the boreal to become a main topic of discussion at the climate talks, though Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin has said that forest-related sequestration should be on the table as a bargaining chip even for industrial nations.

In the U.S., a program approved by Congress and launched through the U.S. Department of Agriculture this year is looking at ways that public and private forests will figure into carbon regulation. Natural carbon sequestration will be incorporated, one climate expert said, after nations first address greenhouse gas emissions from human industrial facilities and autos.

One myth, the report suggests, is that clearcutting northern forests enhances carbon dioxide absorption through a proliferation of new seedling growth, but the research indicates that older trees actually take in and hold more carbon.

The Boreal Forest Initiative, which receives funding from the U.S.-based Pew Charitable Trusts, is considered timely not only within the context of finding cost-effective strategies for reducing human-made carbon, for it has implications for the next generation of forestry.

The global economic downturn has left behind a hobbled home construction industry and a glut of lumber, dramatically slowing demand in the U.S. for cheaper wood products coming across the border from Canada.

Moreover, circulation challenges besetting print media and pressure placed by conservation groups on companies producing mail order catalogs to switch to recycled paper, have also slowed the tree felling for pulp.

If, and when, an economic turnaround begins, conservationists say it is foolhardy to return to the timber practices of old that have caused massive habitat loss for wildlife, a prominent casualty being woodland caribou in lower Canada. The boreal carbon assessment, the report says, lends credence to that argument.

"The world's largest intact forest is, at most, a two-day drive away for most North Americans. Think about it: We live near the northern forest equivalent of the Amazon rainforest and yet we rarely give it a second thought," Kallick says, adding that the boreal isn't only an oxygen engine and a shelter for many species that pass through our lives. "It is a carbon warehouse," he notes, "that our kids, 50 years from now, will be lucky to have."

The report, 33 pages long, can be downloaded by clicking here.

Journalist Todd Wilkinson is writing a book about media mogul turned bison rancher and environmental humanitarian Ted Turner.

 

Comments

[Via Pops]

Although perhaps not technically "boreal", noticeably absent from the green area of the forest map above is the Tongass National Forest - the Alaska rainforest archipelago west of the British Columbia coastline. Since the Tongass is responsible for sequestration of 8% of all US forest lands seems to me it should not be logged - period. Why then does Mr. Kallick (representing PEW) sit on and support the "Tongass Futures Roundtable" so-called biomass "solution" ? This group has been advocating for biomass energy derived from Tongass second-growth trees as well as logging of Tongass old growth trees in order to keep the logging industry "in business" until the second growth is ready for biomass conversion. If Mr. Kallick and PEW were serious about forest carbon sequestration, then why not actively support measures that will benefit carbon sequestration on the Tongass as well? Apparently carbon sequestered on the Tongass is a "vital natural tool" that Kallick and PEW "forgot".

[Raraviss]

Mamacat: Two points: One, focus of report is on recognizing carbon already stored in boreal and promoting a policy of little net loss, not trying to to suggest there are going to be gains attained in sequestered carbon or that size and range of boreal is going to grow in any time span relevent to this century.

Second, as surely you know, methane is produced by decomposition of organic material as in a landfill or, closer to home, from a compost pile. In the boreal and Arctic, the material likely to produce larger amounts of methane, especially as part of warming feedback loop or sudden warming, is currently frozen in the permafrost or slowed in its decay by colder conditions in the peatlands.

[sheila]

And lest we forget - the MOJAVE has been proven to sequester as much CO2 as temperate forest, yet it is under siege for total destruction by Big Energy (Chevron building Big Solar), while tens of millions of rooftops bake and sprawl in the sun without PV or other point of use solutions. It's a crime.

Big Energy, Big Wall Street and Big Transmission are not the solution. We need democratic, incremental, affordable reliable efficiency, conservation, passive design, PV, microwind, geothermal heat exchange WITHIN THE BUILT ENVIRONMENT or we will just rob Peter (slaughtering 50 million more acres of carbon-sequestering wilderness for Big Energy profits) to feed Paul (pretending that this will slow global warming when it will actually result in a massive, immediate SPIKE in GHG emissions).

We should be very afraid of Big Energy solutions, including those being greenwashed by Big Enviros who are greenwashing them. WE are the solution, all we need are policies that enable us to participate (like loans and feed in tariffs).

[Raraviss]

The report speaks to methane and carbon release, particularly from peatlands, but the authors of the report say the release of those greenhouse gases are more than offset by the carbon trapping function of the boreal. Effect being that boreal under current and near term is not a net contributor to warming. The Canadian Boreal Initiative's position, that policy makers have not fully considered the value of the boreal, is stated clearly in the title of its report.

[mamacat]

The Boreal forest already exists, and is already a signifigant source of carbon sequestration. The idea that it can sequester a signifigant amount of additional carbon does not make sense on the face of it.

In order to have the boreals be "...employed to help solve a human problem", the forest would have to expand signifigantly. To do that, it would have to either add additional area, or become more dense. In order to add more area, it would have to either expand to the south or to the north, or both. Expanding to the south is not likely, since it has already been constrained by nature from expanding any further south. It may be able to expand to the north, as the global climate warms the land of the tundra, but it is likely that the same warming will also cause it to shrink in the south, resulting in a net stasis of carbon storage.

The natural conclusion to come to in regard to the boreal forest is that is should be preserved, but that it is not likely to become a sink for any further amount of carbon. As for storing methane, how does one expect a carbon based tree to become a storage mechanism for methane gas? If there is a way for photosynthesis to cause this to happen, I would like to read more about it.

[mamacat]

The author is stating that the northern areas have been overlooked in climate models. Nothing could be further from the truth.

There is great concern that a runaway global heating scenario is possible, because the heating near the poles is causing the release of massive amounts of stored carbon and methane. When the author states "The only things likely to cause release of the carbon is drying and burning of both bogs and forests by fire," he puts forth a position that is not generally accepted.

While preservation of the northern forests is important, global warming is already causing the release of carbon and methane that has been stored in the tundra for thousands of years. The rate of this release will likely increase for the foreseeable future.

[Squeezer55]

The northern Canadian boreal forests are of little economic value and will be left untouched for economic reasons. Aside from the distance from markets which add to costs, there is the fact that trees in the north grow incredibly slow . At the NWT / Yukon border trees 10 feet in height (small) are over 30 years old. This is way to long to make a viable reforestation program . The boreal forest is safe in our lifetimes.

[Javani]

Who can make money off facts? The improved way is to claim there will be logging, and get paid in carbon credits for not logging that what you were not log anyways. Cap and trade, so many scams, so many ways.

[ccairnes]

There have recently been stories in the news media touting plans by the Coast Guard to use biomass to heat federal government buildings. Unfortunately the proposed conversion of US Coast Guard bases in Ketchikan, Kodiak and Sitka Alaska to wood chip heating propels the scientific approach to clean, renewable energy policy in the wrong direction. Errors abound in the acceptance of the hypothesis that wood from the forests of Alaska is a clean, renewable, carbon neutral source of energy.

Simple observation confirms that southeast Alaska contains the nations largest national forest, the Tongass National Forest. However, scientific analysis reveals that the Tongass is the storage facility for 8% of all carbon stored in forestlands throughout the United States and 0.25% globally [Ecosystems (2006) 9: 1051-1065]. The Tongass also excels at removing CO2 from the atmosphere, separating the carbon from the oxygen, storing the carbon in the soil, trees and other vegetation, and reintroducing the oxygen into the air. Whether the source of wood chips for burning comes from old-growth or thinning second-growth trees, the result lays waste to the vital service the Tongass provides, removing and storing carbon.

Biomass, no matter how clean burning the combustion process, is still a combustion process that releases carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. The way the biomass would be acquired would not only release carbon currently stored in the Tongass, it would reduce the future capability of the Tongass to capture and store atmospheric carbon.

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