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The Forest Service’s Carbon Dilemma: Carbon Capture on National Forests or Sustainable Forestry?

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09 Nov, 2023

This post was originally published on Healthy Forest

The U.S. Forest Service is floating a new rule to potentially grant “perpetual rights of use and occupancy” for carbon waste injection under national forests and grasslands. Such rights may include constructing extensive infrastructure such as pipelines, injection wells, and well pads:

Environmentalists slammed the proposed rule, calling it “industrial carbon waste dumping.”  Said one activist: “This proposal is nothing short of ludicrous. Our national forests are already home to the most viable carbon capture and storage technology on Earth — they’re called trees.”

We can agree with that. But anti-forestry groups’ solution to climate change is to layer even more restrictions on timber harvesting under the guise of “protecting” mature and old-growth forests, even as many western forests are converting into net carbon emitters due to wildfire, insects and disease thanks to over 30+ years of forest non-management.

The cycle of forestry –including the never-ending process of planting, growing, harvesting, and replanting trees for wood products – serves as a much more efficient carbon capture and sequestration solution – certainly compared to dumping carbon underground, or locking up our forests from active management.

But science continues to point to the importance of younger trees as part of the climate solution.

A paper published recently in the journal Nature Geosciences found young and middle-aged forests – comprising trees between 50 to 140 years of age – played a dominant role in absorbing atmospheric carbon and accumulating biomass. However, forests that were 140 years old and above were approximately carbon neutral, which is the opposite of vegetation model predictions.

Said one researcher involved in the study: “Vegetation models that predict terrestrial carbon stores do not represent forest demographics and tend to overestimate the carbon sequestration capacity of old-growth forests and underestimate of carbon absorbed by boreal and temperate forests.”

Science is suggesting a robust carbon capture strategy is to focus on managing and replenishing younger forests, which are more efficient at removing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere.

Younger forests are a positive result of active forest management. Managed forests provide renewable wood products that store carbon for generations, and require fewer fossil fuels for their production compared to other types of building materials.

Unlike carbon waste injection projects, forest management doesn’t necessitate the construction of pipelines, injection wells, or well pads. This means that we can make substantial strides in reducing carbon emissions without environmental and infrastructural disruptions. In addition, active forest management helps reduce the risk of carbon-emitting wildfires while enhancing forest health and resilience.

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Source: Healthy Forest

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Land water loss causes sea level rise in 21st century

Land water loss causes sea level rise in 21st century

An international team of scientists, led jointly by The University of Melbourne and Seoul National University, has found global water storage on land has plummeted since the start of the 21st century, overtaking glacier melt as the leading cause of sea level rise and measurably shifting the Earth’s pole of rotation.

Published in Science, the research combined global soil moisture data estimated by the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecast (ECMWF) Reanalysis v5 (ERA5), global mean sea level measurements and observations of Earth’s pole movement in order to estimate changes in terrestrial (land) water storage (TWS) from 1979 to 2016.

“The study raises critical questions about the main drivers of declining water storage on land and whether global lands will continue to become drier,” University of Melbourne author Professor Dongryeol Ryu said.

“Water constantly cycles between land and oceans, but the current rate of water loss from land is outpacing its replenishment. This is potentially irreversible because it’s unlikely this trend will reverse if global temperatures and evaporative demand continue to rise at their current rates. Without substantial changes in climate patterns, the imbalance in the water cycle is likely to persist, leading to a net loss of water from land to oceans over time.”

Between 2000 and 2002, soil moisture decreased by around 1614 gigatonnes (1 Gt equals 1 km3 of water) — nearly double Greenland’s ice loss of about 900 Gt in 2002–2006. From 2003 to 2016, soil moisture depletion continued, with an additional 1009 Gt lost.

Soil moisture had not recovered as of 2021, with little likelihood of recovery under present climate conditions. The authors say this decline is corroborated by independent observations of global mean sea level rise (~4.4 mm) and Earth’s polar shift (~45 cm in 2003–2012).

Water loss was most pronounced across East and Central Asia, Central Africa, and North and South America. In Australia, the growing depletion has impacted parts of Western Australia and south-eastern Australia, including western Victoria, although the Northern Territory and Queensland saw a small replenishment of soil moisture.

Image credit: iStock.com/ZU_09

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