Canada’s carbon sink has sprung a leak
Until recently, its vast forests vacuumed up carbon dioxide. Now that process has been thrown in reverse.
By Mark Clayton | Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor/ March 10, 2009 edition
Reporter Mark Clayton discusses the dilemma facing Canadian foresters and climate scientists: is it worse to cut trees threatened by beetle infestation, or to allow them to remain in a natural state?
Reporter Mark Clayton
Billions of tiny mountain pine beetles are treating Canada’s boreal forest like a 3,000-mile-long salad bar, transforming a key absorber of carbon dioxide greenhouse gas into a CO2 emitter instead.
In just a decade, exploding beetle populations and a rise in wildfires have flipped Canada’s boreal forest from its longstanding role as a natural carbon vacuum – sucking up 55 million or more tons of CO2 annually – to that of a giant tailpipe emitting up to 245 million tons of CO2 each year, according to the Canadian Forest Service.
That sharp about-face is raising questions about the future of northern forests worldwide that are being hit hard by global warming – including Russia’s massive boreal expanse, where wildfires have risen dramatically.
The trend has grown clearer in the past decade and was one reason that Canada did not count its forests as a carbon sink as part of the Kyoto climate treaty process: It couldn’t be sure they were.
Debate over how best to respond is growing. Some forest experts argue for more logging to remove vulnerable trees before beetles or fire get to them. Other scientists and environmentalists say the solution lies in logging less and leaving more boreal in its natural state. In 2007, 1,500 highly respected scientists from more than 50 countries called for more protection of Canada’s 1.4 billion-acre boreal forest, calling it one of the largest intact forest and wetland ecosystems left on Earth and home to large populations of grizzly bear, caribou, and wolves.
“The debate is raging on both sides of the argument – and both are using the science for their own purposes,” says Werner Kurz, senior research scientist for the Canadian Forest Service. “Our analysis shows Canada’s boreal has been a sink [CO2 absorber] as recently as the late 1990s, but has now become a source of carbon dioxide.”
Central to the debate is how long trees will be around to absorb and store carbon. Old-growth forests 400 years old or older may store a lot more carbon than a young forest does – but a young forest absorbs it far faster. Since old forests are considered vulnerable to beetles and fires, the question becomes: What’s the right mix of old, slow-growing and young, fast-growing forests?
According to Dr. Kurz’s mathematical model, fires and beetles are projected to destroy a Montana-size swath (144,000 square miles) of boreal by the year 2020, if trends continue. CO2 releases from decaying wood due to the beetle alone are projected at 270 million tons over that period.
While the logging of tropical forests is under scrutiny for hastening global warming, some suggest that more logging of northern boreal makes sense in light of fires and insect devastation.
“If one is truly concerned about the risks to the environment from climate change, then the case can be made that logging of sustainably managed forests should be encouraged,” Ontario Forest Research Institute scientists concluded in a study published last year.
The provincial government study found that carbon may be stored longer in wood products like construction lumber (which has a half-life of 67 to 100 years) than as forest. Using wood in construction also reduces carbon emissions if it replaces steel or concrete. The report concluded that more, not less, timber harvesting is called for in the beetle- and fire-prone boreal.
“Nonsense,” says Merran Smith, the Vancouver-based director of climate programs for ForestEthics, an international environmental group.
Cutting more trees is “robbing the carbon bank.” Despite its shift from carbon sink to carbon source, Canada’s boreal forest remains today a repository to an estimated 186 billion tons of carbon, the equivalent of 27 years of global carbon emissions.
Peat bogs may be ‘carbon bomb’
“Such studies [as the Ontario Forest Research Institute’s] fit conveniently with the timber industry’s conclusion that these forests should be logged,” Ms. Smith says. “The idea that you’re going to reduce global warming by logging more is ridiculous. These forests are storing an enormous amount of carbon.”
How enormous? Perhaps the most overlooked piece of the puzzle may be that cutting forest canopy could release massive amounts of CO2 contained in yards-thick peat bogs that lie beneath the boreal. That peat layer is not only a “carbon bank,” but potentially a “carbon bomb,” some say.
David Schindler, professor of ecology at the University of Alberta, is among a number of scientists worried that cutting the forest faster could vastly accelerate global warming by causing the peat layer to dry out, decay, and release CO2 – or to burn in wildfires.
“A lot of people are fooled because the trees don’t seem very large,” Professor Schindler says. “They don’t realize there’s as much carbon stored in the forest floor as in the Amazon. That ‘carbon bomb,’ as some call it, is a real concern.”
The Canadian forest industry in 2007 responded to increased beetle- and fire-killed timber by increasing harvest rates, the CFS reported last year. Given that much of the boreal may live less than a century, the Ontario Forest Research Institute found “sustainable forest management and use of wood products helps to mitigate climate change.”
“Sustainable” is open to debate.
Some 70 percent of the nation’s managed forest – and much of the boreal – is certified by third parties as “sustainably managed,” the Forest Products Association of Canada reports. All land managed by FPAC members is certified sustainable and the group touts its investments in energy efficiency.
That doesn’t impress Peter Lee of Global Forest Watch Canada.
“It’s clear to me that the managed part of the forest is contributing to the forest turning into a carbon source,” Mr. Lee says. “The more heavily you manage for logging and industrial activity, the more these forests become a source of atmospheric carbon.”
But as long as global demand exists for wood products, “very few sources are as carefully managed as ours,” counters Avrim Lazar, president of FPAC. “The real question is: If you didn’t get [wood] from the [Canadian] boreal, where would it come from?’ ”
One answer: from illegal logging activities in Russia’s hard-pressed boreal forest – which contains half the world’s boreal, he says. FPAC, he points out, supported the Ontario government’s move last year to put 55 million acres, about one-quarter of the provincial forest, off limits to logging.
In the end, what is truly sustainable may hinge on a hotly debated issue: How much carbon is stored – and for how long – in wood products like homes, furniture, and paper? Wood framing for homes can prevent release of carbon into the atmosphere for as long or perhaps longer than forests themselves, the study says.
Product disposal is critical factor
“If the stuff ends up in landfill, then it comes back as methane which destroys us completely on the cycle,” Mr. Lazar says. Airless landfills promote the production of methane as a byproduct of decomposition. As a greenhouse gas, methane is ten times as potent as carbon dioxide.
“Really, the critical factor on whether forestry has a positive or negative impact on greenhouse gases is management of the product at the end of the life cycle.”
But with much of Canada’s logging going to produce paper, the carbon content of which is released back into the air in just a few years, environmentalists say more detailed life cycle analyses of wood-product carbon is required. Researchers are looking into such things as the impact longer logging roads would have on emissions from logging trucks driving further.
Such issues may inevitably become part of the debate at the coming climate summit in Copenhagen this December. But Andrew Park, an assistant professor at the Center for Forest Interdisciplinary Research at the University of Winnipeg, is circumspect about the impact of less or more logging on greenhouse-gas emissions.
“Our vast territory and the variability in disturbance … means that we will never be able to control whether the boreal forest as a whole acts as a source or a sink,” he writes in an e-mail.
To ensure that the boreal forest continues to act as a globally important carbon sink, he writes, “we need to limit the warming that is underway. Not to do so is to risk losing the billions of tons of carbon stored in peat and permafrost.”
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Comments
2. Brad Arnold | 03.11.09
The global average surface temperature has increased significantly by 0.15 ± 0.05°C/decade.
‘Leemans and Eickhout (2004) found that adaptive capacity decreases rapidly with an increasing rate of climate change. Their study finds that five percent of all ecosystems cannot adapt more quickly than 0.1 C per decade over time. Forests will be among the ecosystems to experience problems first because their ability to migrate to stay within the climate zone they are adapted to is limited. If the rate is 0.3 C per decade, 15 percent of ecosystems will not be able to adapt. If the rate should exceed 0.4 C per decade, all ecosystems will be quickly destroyed, opportunistic species will dominate, and the breakdown of biological material will lead to even greater emissions of CO2. This will in turn increase the rate of warming’ –Leemans and Eickhout (2004), ‘Another reason for concern: regional and global impacts on ecosystems for different levels of climate change,’ Global Environmental Change 14, 219–228
A 0.3 degree C. increase is predicted for the period 2004-2014 by Smith, Cusack et al, 2007
In other words, the Canadian and Russian boral forests, as well as the Amazon rainforest are toast unless we utilize geoengineering.
3. Mark Syman | 03.11.09
More information is becoming known, that the recent warming is mostly the result a 30 year warming cycle, and that we may be starting a 30 year cooling cycle, so in 10 years, we will have some relief from the current situation.
4. TOM G | 03.11.09
The dead trees from beetle damage need to be removed for fire safety and prophylaxis. The trees should be slow-roasted into charcoal, capturing VOC’s in the process for fuel. The charcoal should be plowed under the same forest area and replanted. Some of the charcoal should be used for 1% cattle feed additive to reduce methane flatulence. Some of the charcoal should be incorporated into kitty litter and toilet paper as a way of sequestering carbon and tying up other methane.
5. Guy Thompto | 03.11.09
I think we need to monitor the amount of CO2 emitted by blovious scientists and politicians that are compensated through research grants and airheaded crusaders. We must force these grievous offenders to voluntarily limit their gaseous expulsions for the sake of all mankind.
6. Pat Salm | 03.11.09
Merran Smith is quoted as saying “cutting more trees is robbing the carbon bank”. This uninformed comment fails to realize that Canada loses 20 times more forest area to fires and insects annually than is harvested (State of Forest reports 2002-2006). I’d much rather see our forests harvested, generating economic value and locking up some of the carbon in wood products than simply assuming that by not harvesting, the trees in the forests will live forever.
7. Arthur E. Lemay | 03.12.09
It seems to me that there is a fundamental arrogance and imbecility loose in the world on this subject.
The amount of CO2 in the atmosphere is based on emissions and the balance from the absorption and release of CO2 by the oceans, forests, and the earth, bogs, and wetlands. CO2 is buffered by the oceans depending on the temperature, and microorganisms who absorb CO2 is deposited as limestone. The white cliffs of Dover in England is an example of just how much CO2 is chemically neutralized by this process. Forests do this by absorbing CO2 by growing plants and trees. CO2 is released by rotting plant matter and termites who consume plant matter.
Now, the NOAA CO2 measurement in Hawaii done at Mauna Loa, has measured one thousandth of one percent increase in worldwide atmospheric CO2 in four years. So it would seem that whatever the Canadians do, or don’t do, it won’t even be detectable or measurable.
And, it would also seem that if we euthanized the entire world’s population and shut down all man-made power sources — that would not even be detectable either.
8. PAUL F. MILLER | 03.13.09
I am fully aware my comment could easily arouse a snicker, a smile, a laugh or perhaps thoughtful contemplation. I wonder as I mature if perhaps the most important ingredient we tend to most often overlook or totally ignore is the – attitude – or the INTENTION we have as we contemplate what “we” deem as appropriate action in the case of the bark beetle in the forests of Canada. Increasingly people in all parts of our world are awakening to the “difference” one attitude has towards the outcome sought.
Admittedly my attitude in the statements to follow are indicative of “prejudice” as I question if loggers, lumber producers, stock brokers, financiers, and “geoengineers” as they like to be termed, have a HOLISTIC and honorable INTENT when the topic of clear-cutting this lumber is the topic of the day…?
Like man, trees are essentially massive structures composed of incredible amounts of water and therefore like man are affected by those forces which affect water such as attitude and intention. Like I began, I am quite sure this notion is a bit off the radar screen of most folks and that is understandable, especially those of us in the USA as for the last 40 years in particular our education has consisted of only that fostered by private for profit corporate interests, which have only next quarter’s P&L in sight.
Respectfully,
9. Stuart | 03.21.09
Wow, as a student, who just happened to stumble across this site while researching a paper on Mt. Pine Beetle and Climate Change, I cant help but leave a comment:
These, with the exception of Mr Miller - who raised an interesting point, and should looks into “Ecosystem Based Management”, have got to be a collection of the most uninformed, embarrassingly simple mined comments I have ever come across! How any of you feel your thoughts are worth wasting our time with, is beyond me. It commendable that you are engaged in this topic, but get educated before wading in.
I sincerely hope you don’t vote with these misconceptions and assumptions guiding you, if so you are doing my generation as severe disservice.
10. Jenny | 08.13.09
I had never thought about this aspect of the pine beetle. I wonder what the result will be if the specialists cannot even agree… I do have a small side note though. We drove through the Rockies this past weekend while on a mini vacation. Other friends that were from the East Coast of Canada also did the drive and when we arrived at our destination, they asked if we had seen the forest fire destruction.
They did not believe that what they had witnessed were kilometers of pine beetle destruction. I think that the majority of residence in the country east of Alberta have no clue exactly what his happening to our forests… where is the public awareness?
My heart aches for our earth.
11. Heidi | 08.29.09
An insightful but very sad read. We have a huge problem with the beetles here in Colorado as well. Surely there must be an answer other than logging. Perhaps the best intervention would be not to intervene.
12. Acai Berry Pills | 09.02.09
No one really understands the implications of natural forest fires. This is natures way to destroy over-population. Whether it’s a type of tree or a type of bug or other animal, there is always a reason for nature to correct itself.
13. Framingham MA Real Estate | 09.15.09
This is quite amazing. I did not even realize it was possible for a forest to change from a carbon dioxide vacuum to basically a huge problem. I know there are conflicting views on this. How does one go about proving that there really is a problem? Obviously keeping our environment safe should be of primary concern. Has there been any studies done that prove there has been a negative impact on the environment since things have changed?
14. business communication | 09.15.09
Personally I think that the actual process of forest fires is natural and is essential in order for nature to maintain its balance. It’s like a season, the death later gives birth to life.
15. KL Karrington | 10.26.09
While forest fires were natural, it is obvious that the climate change has increased the number of forest fires, and what these fires emit add up to the damage on the ozone. It’s a vicious cycle leading to a death sentence unless something is done to prevent it.
16. best escort service | 11.02.09
it has been suggested via alt media that this is all a smokescreen to implement an agressive global tax. if this is mother nature and a natural course of history, then what should we be worried about?
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1. Daniela | 03.11.09
I think a worldwide sustainable management is necessary to prevent the greenhouse from expanding. Not only should we focus on the Canadian’s boreal forest,but also the barron land in other countries.