Forest management and carbon storage has been a hot topic lately. Wednesday, the same day that The Huffington Post published an opinion piece by independent environmentalist Ellen Moyer calling for a ban on all commercial logging on public lands, the science journal Nature posted a piece offering three strategies regarding forest management in the climate-change era. In it, Valentin Bellassen from France's National Institute for Agronomic Research and Sebastiaan Luyssaert at the Atomic and Alternative Energy Commission (also in France) call the current state of forest management "more of a gamble than a scientific debate," and insist that more research is needed "while a scientifically robust prediction of the persistence of the forest carbon sink is worked out":
Forest management and carbon storage has been a hot topic lately. Wednesday, the same day that The Huffington Post published an opinion piece by independent environmentalist Ellen Moyer calling for a ban on all commercial logging on public lands, the science journal Nature posted a piece offering three strategies regarding forest management in the climate-change era. In it, Valentin Bellassen from France's National Institute for Agronomic Research and Sebastiaan Luyssaert at the Atomic and Alternative Energy Commission (also in France) call the current state of forest management "more of a gamble than a scientific debate," and insist that more research is needed "while a scientifically robust prediction of the persistence of the forest carbon sink is worked out":
Much has been learned about the carbon cycle in forests, but there are still too many gaps in our knowledge. New observations have called long-accepted theories into question: The finding that unharvested forests, for example, are absorbing more carbon than they release … is contrary to the tenet of ecology, known as Odum's framework, that carbon flows in natural forests should be in equilibrium. ... Until more is known, we propose that forestry management should prioritize 'win-win' strategies-those that increase both forest stocks and timber harvest, through measures such as protecting trees from animals, or replacing dying or low-productivity forests.
Here are their three suggestions:
1. "So that studies can be compared and uncertainties addressed, scientists should state their assumptions more clearly … The forest-science community should make explicit the assumed behavior of unmanaged forests that lies behind its assessment of forest mitigation strategies and its lifecycle analysis for wood products. Most of these studies assume that unmanaged forests are carbon neutral, which overestimates the climate benefits of harvest. Others assume that the in situ forest sink will be sustained forever, underestimating the climate benefits of harvest."
2. "The most carbon-efficient uses of wood should be encouraged. Harvesting more timber could be, especially if the forest sink starts shrinking, a good climate-change mitigation strategy, but to be effective it must be targeted to uses that will save the most tons of CO2 per cubic meter harvested. In construction, for example, wood can substitute for steel or cement for studs or walls, and can then be recovered, recycled and burnt."
3. "Forest-management techniques that increase both the amount of wood produced and the carbon stock retained in the forest should be prioritized. When not in conflict with other forest uses, replacing dying or low-productivity stands, protecting young sprouts from damage after harvest, planting tree mixes that are more resilient and optimizing fertilizer use and tree growth by adding nitrogen-fixing species in afforestation projects, will contribute to climate-change mitigation no matter how the global carbon sink evolves. … By following 'no-regret' strategies, we can buy time while we learn more."
The full article from Nature can be read here.
