climate change

Dead Forests Release Less Carbon Into Atmosphere Than Expected

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According to new research, lead by researchers at the University of Arizona, trees killed in the wake of mountain pine beetle infestations in Colorado have released less carbon into the atmosphere than expected.  Read about the research and hear from the scientists in this article from the University of Arizona, excerpts of which are also highlighted  below.  And High Country News wins the award for best headline of the day, “Good news for people who love bad news,” which contains even more information about the new research.  What does this new scientific research say about the validity of the oft-repeated claims from the timber industry and others that we have to cut down our forests so that we can”lock up” that carbon in 2 x 4’s?
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Massive tree die-offs release less carbon into the atmosphere than previously thought, new research led by the University of Arizona suggests.  Across the world, trees are dying in increasing numbers, most likely in the wake of a climate changing toward drier and warmer conditions, scientists suspect. In western North America, outbreaks of mountain pine beetles (Dendroctonus ponderosae) have killed billions of trees from Mexico to Alaska over the last decade.

Given that large forested areas play crucial roles in taking carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere through photosynthesis and turning it into biomass, an important question is what happens to that stored carbon when large numbers of trees die.

“The general expectation we had was that when trees die on a large scale, it would lead to a big pulse of carbon into the atmosphere through microorganisms metabolizing all that dead wood,” said David Moore, an assistant professor in the School of Natural Resources and the Environment in the UA College of Agriculture and Life Sciences and one of the lead authors of the study, which is published online in the journal Ecology Letters.

“A question we are looking to answer is, ‘How does the carbon dioxide released from the forest into the atmosphere change as you have large scale tree mortality over time?”’ said second lead author Nicole Trahan, a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Colorado, Boulder.

According to co-author Russell Monson, who is the Louise Foucar Marshall Professor in the UA School of Natural Resources and the Environment, forests affect the carbon budget of the atmosphere through two dominant processes: photosynthesis, by which plants take carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere and lock it up in organic compounds, and respiration, by which plants and soil microbes release carbon dioxide back into the atmosphere. The balance of these processes determines whether a particular forest is a carbon source or a carbon sink.

After a massive tree die-off, conventional wisdom has it that a forest would go from carbon sink to carbon source: Since the soil microbes are still around, they are expected to release large amounts of the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, where it is thought to accelerate climate change.

“Surprisingly, we couldn’t find a big pulse,” said Moore, who is also a member of the UA Institute of the Environment.

Trahan added: “In the first few years after beetles have come in and killed trees, the carbon release from the surrounding soil actually goes down.”

Large amounts of dead trees, it turns out, hold on to their carbon for a long time and prevent it from quickly being released into the soil or the atmosphere. According to Moore, this might be due to several reasons: First, while trees take up carbon dioxide during the day during photosynthesis, they release some of it at night when they switch to respiration.

“Once the trees are dead, respiration by the trees goes away,” Moore said. “In addition, if you cut off the carbon that a tree put into the soil while it was alive, you reduce the ability of the soil microbes around the roots to respire.”

“After five or six years, there is a buildup of some dead plant material, leaf litter and so on, and that seems to drive the rate of respiration up again. But it never recovers to the point it was before the beetles killed the trees, at least over the span of a decade,” Moore said.

Finally, the trees studied in this project grow at higher elevations, where cooler temperatures slow the decomposition process and thereby carbon-releasing respiration.

“Overall, we discovered that after a tree die-off, the loss of carbon in the soil results less from increased respiration by microbes but more from the fact that trees are no longer sequestering photosynthesized carbon into the soil,” Moore said. “There seems to be a dampening of the carbon cycle rather than a big pulse of carbon release. So even if the forest now goes from a sink to a source of carbon dioxide, it’s not as dramatic of an effect as we thought it would be.”

Forest Service Chief Talks Climate Change — in Washington and on the Ground

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Here’s a link to Char Miller’s take on this discussion, and his interview with the Chief.

As to restoration…

No; I think it’s the right word. It’s just that we have to understand that it doesn’t mean going back. It means to restore the health, the vigor of these systems and that sometimes it is to restore to the future. There may be a better word and I’d be sure open to that but it’s more [important] to understand the concept.

Personally I think it’s easier to understand and communicate concepts with the public when you don’t have to redefine commonly used English words. But perhaps that’s just me ;).

Also, I am not so sure that “science” has the answers that Chief Tidwell thinks it does. If the future is changing to something we’ve never seen, how can we know if things we try now and work, will work in 10 or 20 years? We really can’t. I think we need to be careful about what we think we can do and particularly about what we invest the public’s money in, based on an uncertain and unknowable future. More research, despite what’s said, and despite infusions of megabucks, can’t predict the future of complex systems. So maybe we ought to start with a better understanding what’s going on today.. perhaps starting with the items in the People’s Database.

Chief Tidwell on “Sustaining Forests in the Time of Climate Change”: 2013 Pinchot Distinguished Lecture

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2013DistLectureInvitationThanks to the Pinchot Institute for sending this…Char is going to feature it in his column this week and that will be reposted here when available.

Earlier this month Tom Tidwell delivered the 2013 Pinchot Distinguished Lecture in Washington, DC. His speech was titled, “Sustaining Forests in the Time of Climate Change,” and was followed by an extended Q&A moderated by Char Miller and Al Sample. Some video highlights, including the Chief calling for reauthorization of stewardship contracting and speaking on the importance of urban forests, green infrastructure, and international programs are available on our website: http://www.pinchot.org/events/432.

The Pinchot Institute also forwarded this transcript of the talk.

Thanks again to the Pinchot Institute and Happy 50th Birthday!

I just watched the first clip, and I think it sets a foundation for the management of the future. So that’s why I think it’s important to discuss.

I agree that the past is not the future and that should change the way we think about everything. That’s what our Wise Forest Supervisor The Professor said that we should have a campfire, sit around, and discuss what it really means to all that we know if we can’t go by what we learned in the past; not the practitioners and not the scientists.

The Chief says we need to “restore” function and processes. But we wouldn’t need to restore them if they were fine now. But if they’re not resilient now, then we are assuming that they were appropriately resilient in the past. But then this climate change is “unprecedented” so it is just a random coincidence that they were resilient before? My point is that I think the word “restore” in unnecessarily confusing.

Why can’t we say:

We don’t know what’s going to happen
We will never have the bucks to manage everything
We will need to pick and choose which processes and functions and species are most important to us
We will have to weigh that against the costs and the likelihood of success of interventions
The most important thing is to protect the basics.. air, water, and soil and we may have to deal with vegetation and wildlife and fish that are not our preferred species.
But it is our task, as Forest Service employees to be absolutely clear and transparent to the public about what we plan to do, or not do, and what we believe the impacts will be to them and to the environment.
It’s not “restoration” at all, except that we are going to try to bring the good things from the past into the future. It’s joining together to figure out what’s important to us, as the climate changes, and see if we can work together to keep those things.

Comments on this, or any other part of the video or transcript, are appreciated. I’d like to hear from some of you seldom-heard-from folks if you feel so inclined…

Let’s Get the Public in the Science Priority Pipeline

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For those who haven’t heard, there has been much wailing and gnashing of teeth by the Big Science community about sequestration. Here’s a post by Roger Pielke, Jr. on his blog. What we don’t talk about is why things people want are not funded and things scientists want, are.. or why the public is not involved in scientific priorities. After the excerpt from the blog post below, I’ll get to an example that I think illustrates the issue.

The scientists, and science policy scholars in particular, exist to generate evidence in support of that axiom in order to keep public funds flowing. Both conceits are problematic in science policy.

In a paper published in Minerva last year I explored the origins and symbolic significance of the phrase “basic research” (read it here in PDF). In that paper I argued that the phrase originated about 1920 in the context of the US Department of Agriculture, where “research was the basic work” of the agency. The phrase was shortened to “basic research” which ironically enough meant what we today call “applied research.”

Over time the phrase became part of the linear model of innovation, shown in the figure at the top of this post. The model is faith based, meaning that the relationship of basic research funding to societal benefits is taken as an “axiom” which often finds its expression in a misreading of economics. Scientists often demand a privileged place for science in government budgets based on claims that in “basic research” lies the key to growth and prosperity for all.

Unfortunately, the relationship of so-called “basic research” and outcomes like economic growth and other societal benefits remains poorly understood. For instance, in 2007, Leo Sveikauskas of the Bureau of Economic Analysis surveyed the economy-wide returns on R&D (here in PDF) and found a complex picture at odds with the elegance of the linear model:

Returns to many forms of publicly financed R&D are near zero . . . Many elements of university and government research have very low returns, overwhelmingly contribute to economic growth only indirectly, if at all, and do not belong in investment.
The exceptions that he cites include federal R&D in health, agriculture and defense — all instances of mission-oriented applied research.

Now here is another interesting article from New Scientist, publicly available and well worth reading, on a Resources For the Future study on how the U.S. is doing with climate change. The title is “how Obama Will Deliver His Climate Promise”. I don’t know about you, but friends and strangers feel comfortable lecturing me at how poorly the US is doing..
but what I found interesting on the topic “who funds whom to study what, and why?” is the box in the article.

Fixing America’s gas leak

Measured over a century, methane has 25 times the global warming potential of carbon dioxide – so the last thing the planet needs is for the stuff to be escaping into the atmosphere. Yet that’s happening on a massive scale in the US, through leaks from production wells and the pipes that distribute natural gas.

The US Environmental Protection Agency estimates total losses at 2.4 per cent of the gas being extracted, but the true figure could be higher. A survey in Colorado, led by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, last year suggested the region’s wells were losing some 4 per cent of what is produced.

Putting firmer numbers on the problem is the goal of a study led by the Environmental Defense Fund (EDF) in New York City. It should have figures for production wells by the end of March, and for the entire distribution system by January 2014.

With better numbers in hand, the government could demand the leaks are plugged. “It is quite possible to produce natural gas with minimal ‘fugitive’ emissions,” says Mark Brownstein of the EDF. “It may just be a question of operational and maintenance practice.”

So this piece hits on two of my favorite topics..

1) if EPA and NOAA came up with different numbers, shouldn’t there be a joint story for why the numbers are different?
2) If this question is really important to the US fighting climate change, why isn’t someone besides EDF funding it? (Do we think they are objective?)

Which reminds me of this article in the Denver Post “Hickenlooper argues in D.C. for state regulation of fracking.”

Hickenlooper, a former geologist, talked about “fugitive methane” — poisonous gas escaping during gas production. He said Colorado officials are working with Colorado State University on a study to measure air quality in different seasons in oil-producing parts of the state to “understand the consequences.”

Doesn’t it seem like if natural gas is going to dig us out of our climate change hole in the short term, we would spend more federal bucks on ensuring it’s safe.. say compared to “basic science.” If we need to understand something vitally important to our energy future and to human health and the nevironment, hodgepodgery is not a good enough strategy. In my opinion.

Utah’s High Elevation Mortality

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This picture is located within the Cedar Breaks National Monument, where conifer mortality is quite excessive. There is really not much that can be done with this situation, other than spending lots of money to fell, pile and burn. Within the Dixie National Forest, this mortality dominates the upper elevations. Even at this altitude of over 10,000 feet, the land is very dry for 9 months, except for seasonal lightning storms. Like some of our public lands, we need a triage system to deal with such overwhelming mortality and fuels build-ups. In this example, we are too late to employ a market-based solution, which would do more non-commercial work.

I have seen this area over many years, and have watched as forests die and rot, with catastrophic wildfire being the “end game”. Anyone venture a guess at what will grow here, in the future?

www.facebook.com/LarryHarrellFotoware

Climate Research Juxtaposition

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I noticed this study..

Climate change’s effects on temperate rain forests surprisingly complex

Science-based strategies help managers to adapt to general warming trend
Longer, warmer growing seasons associated with a changing climate are altering growing conditions in temperate rain forests, but not all plant species will be negatively affected, according to research conducted by the U.S. Forest Service’s Pacific Northwest Research Station.

Research featured in the January 2013 issue of Science Findings—a monthly publication of the station—reveals a complex range of forest plant responses to a warming climate.

“ Although the overall potential for growth increases as the climate warms, we found that plant species differ in their ability to adapt to these changing conditions,” said Tara Barrett, a research forester with the station who led the study.

I don’t know who would be surprised by that, nor by the fact that climate impacts on soil microflora, herbivores, and diseases and insects, (not to speak of invasives) may be unpredictable. But “science=based studies will help managers adapt..” well.. OK.

However we also see this one from the synthesis for the National Climate Assessment press release here..

For example, the agricultural report indicates increases in atmospheric carbon dioxide, rising temperatures, and altered precipitation patterns will affect agricultural productivity. Climate change will exacerbate the stresses already occurring from weeds, insects, and disease. Increases in the incidence of extreme weather events will have an increasing influence on agricultural productivity. Over the next 25 years, the effects of climate change on agricultural production and economic outcomes for both producers and consumers in the United States are expected to be mixed, depending on regional conditions. Beyond 2050, changes are expected to include shifts in crop production areas, increases in pest control expenses, and greater disease prevalence.

The forest sector report indicates that the most rapidly visible and significant short-term effects on forest ecosystems will be caused by fire, insects, invasive species, and combinations of multiple stressors. Wildfire is expected to increase throughout the United States, causing at least a doubling of area burned by the mid-21st century.

“This report strengthens our resolve to aggressively continue treating and restoring our nation’s forests to reduce future fire impacts,” said U.S. Forest Service Chief Tom Tidwell. “Recent fires in Colorado and other areas throughout the country serve as a grim portent for what we expect to see more of in the future. I’m confident that we have a strong plan in place to keep pace with the impacts a changing climate will have on our forests and grasslands.”

Although some regions will be affected more than others, these disturbances are likely to change the structure and function of ecosystems across millions of acres over a short period of time with detrimental effects on forest resources. Anticipated effects include increased tree mortality, changes in species assemblages, and reduced water quality.

But if we go beyond the press release, we find this..

6. Can U.S. forests adapt to changing climate?

Yes, but not without the help of forest managers and support of the American public. U.S. forests have successfully adapted to changing conditions since the 1880s when coal replaced wood as the primary domestic, industrial, and transportation fuel. Although the U.S. population has nearly tripled, cities have grown, and farming has changed dramatically since then, the area of forests in the U.S. has changed less than 5 percent and forests have continued to provide essential services. But the keys to our success for the past 130 years have been the increase in our scientific understanding of forests and the benefits they provide and public support for active management of forests to meet emerging and future needs. Some forests are already being managed using “climate smart” practices, but much more will be needed —more science and more active management—to help forests adapt successfully to climate changes in the coming 100 years. Resource managers in the USDA Forest Service are already engaged in a wide range of sustainable forest management practices (e.g., reducing hazardous fuels, maintaining structurally diverse forests) that improve resilience to future climate stresses.

Does anyone else wonder why we have so much funding going towards overlapping areas of different downscaled models, and so little to looking at the impacts of practices like oil and gas drilling? It’s really not the “corporate influence” so much as the lack of a “People’s Research Agenda” and the relative flushness of “climate change” funding IMHO.

I don’t know if you have been following the “extreme weather” issue mentioned in the press but Roger Pielke, Jr. had an interesting blog post on that and horsemeat in your lasagna here.

I also think it’s interesting how people use the term “extreme events” see the Q&A mentioned above.

What other effects are anticipated for U.S. forests?
Climate change projections suggest increased variability in temperature and precipitation. Extreme events including dry spells, sustained droughts, and heat waves, can have large effects not only on forests, but on the wildlife and fish living in them and on the people that use forests. Further, the quality of life in rural communities will be affected. For example, a community that depends on forest streams for high quality drinking water may see summertime flows reduced or need to add more pre-treatment if increased soil erosion from heavy rains muddy the water. Tourism will decline if forests die from bugs or wild fires and employment in forest products mills may decline or disappear if healthy forests disappear. Some of these impacts will extend well beyond the rural communities to touch the lives of people in cities far removed from the forests.

How Climate Change Could Wipe Out the Western Forests

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In The Atlantic.

So what I think it interesting about this is that we don’t actually know if conditions will suit trees in the future, just logically some tree genotypes and species might be replaced by others. Do you want to give up on trees at all, say in New Mexico and Arizona, or do you want to try planting? Do you trust climate models to tell you what the climate is going to be like in 2050, or do you want to figure out strategies that might work under a variety of climate scenarios? If, as the last paragraph says, we “haven’t had landscapes like this,” will we have to change our expectations of where associated wildlife species can live?

Here’s the link and here is an excerpt.

Climate change can’t take all the blame for the severity of the fires or the other problems forests are facing in the U.S. and around the world. But here at least, much of the blame can be pegged to other kinds of human activity. A bad year for fires in 1879 laid waste to huge swaths of American forest — thanks to a drought, but also to the ongoing efforts of settlers burning off forest to make way for homes and agriculture. As Teddy Roosevelt put it several years later, when he was pushing for better conservation of the nation’s natural resources, “The time has come to inquire seriously what will happen when our forests are gone.”

The trees grew back, but the destruction led to extensive areas predominated by same-age trees, which are now just the right size for a beetle attack, according to Sibold. In the 1900s, Americans swung in the opposite direction. They became overprotective of their forests and suppressed many fires, which allowed fuel to build up and made conditions ripe for more extreme burns now.

The scientists don’t like to characterize the changes to the Western scenery as “bad.” Many prefer to stay neutral with words like “different” and “unique.” But when pressed, they sound concerned, and gloomy. “We haven’t had landscapes like this,” Sibold said. “You have all of these things interacting, and it’s generally not good news if you’re a tree in Colorado.”

Groups seek protection of Whitebark Pine under the ESA

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The Alliance for the Wild Rockies and WildWest Institute filed a lawsuit yesterday in Federal District Court in Missoula against the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) in response to the FWS’s July 2011 decision that the whitebark pine is “warranted for listing as a threatened or endangered species under the Endangered Species Act” but precluded by higher priority actions.

“The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has already concluded that whitebark pine faces numerous threats, including climate change, that are so pressing that whitebark pine is in danger of extinction,” said Mike Garrity, Executive Director of the Alliance for the Wild Rockies. “This is the first time the federal government has declared a widespread tree species in danger of imminent extinction from climate change.  Since the Forest Service still has proposals to clearcut whitebark pine, all we’re doing is asking the court to move the listing process along a little faster so we can protect what’s left under the Endangered Species Act.”

The plaintiffs are requesting that the Court declare the agency’s decision is contrary to law, set aside or remand the decision, and compel the agency to promptly set a reasonable date to issue a proposed Endangered Species listing rule for whitebark pine.

Whitebark pine is a slow-growing, longed-life tree with life spans up to 500 years and sometimes more than 1000 years.  Whitebark pine is a keystone — or foundation — species in western North America where it increases biodiversity and contributes to critical ecosystem functions.  Those include providing highly-nutritious seeds for more than 20 different species including Clark’s Nutcracker, grizzly bears, black bears, Steller’s Jay, and Pine Grosbeak.

“People who spend time in the high-country realize that whitebark pine are dying at alarming rates due to impacts associated with climate change,” explained Matthew Koehler, with the WildWest Institute.  “We cannot sit back, do nothing, and watch a critically important component of our high-country ecosystem just disappear and go extinct before our eyes.  This isn’t just about the whitebark pine, but about the future viability of these high country ecosystems, including the species that rely upon that habitat such as grizzly bears and Clark’s Nutcrackers.”

The role the pine seeds play in the ecosystem is fascinating.  Clark’s nutcrackers crack open the pine cones and collect the seeds in specialized throat pouches.  The birds then cache the seeds in small piles in numerous shallow holes on the forest floor.  If the Clark’s nutcrackers, or other wildlife species, don’t come back to eat all the seeds, new trees sprout.  Additionally, red squirrels collect and bury larges caches of whole pine cones in middens.  Grizzly bears unearth the caches, carefully pry off the scales of the pine cones with their claws, and then pull out the seeds with their tongues.  Studies in the Yellowstone National Park area show that grizzly bears obtain one-quarter to two-thirds of their energy from the seeds.  The 30-50% fat content from whitebark pine seeds promotes survival and reproduction of female grizzly bears that rely on this fat not only to hibernate, but also to support lactation.  When pine seeds are plentiful, grizzly bears have more surviving cubs.  And in years when pine seeds are scarce, the result is more conflicts with humans and more dead grizzly bears.

The U.S. Forest Service estimates that climate change will result in the whitebark pine population shrinking to less than 3% of its current U.S. distribution by the end of the century.

Copy of complaint: http://ncfp.files.wordpress.com/2013/01/whitebark_pine_complaint_filed_01-15-13.pdf

California’s Dense Forests Present New Opportunities

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Forestry operations and bioenergy have been part of the economic and social fabric in Northern California for decades. A five-year study produced in 2009 by the USDA Forest Service modeled forest management under different scenarios across 2.7 million acres encompassing the Feather River watershed. The model’s time horizon spanned four decades, examining wildfire behavior, forest thinning operations and a range of environmental and economic impacts. It concluded that in virtually every aspect analyzed, managing forest resources and utilizing biomass for energy production provides significant advantages over the status quo.

With acres per wildfire going WAY up, thinning projects seem to be the way to go to reduce both wildfire sizes and wildfire intensities. Again, we have strict diameter limits in the Sierra Nevada, and clearcutting has been banned since 1993.

The link is here

“Green” Xmas Trees?

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Giant Sequoia Plantation

Giant Sequoia Plantation

The pro-tree-farm argument goes like this: When you plant a tree, it goes from seedling to full-grown plant by rapidly extracting carbon from the atmosphere, including carbon that humans have emitted by burning fossil fuels and raising cattle. (When a climatologist looks at a tree, he sees a leafy pillar of solidified greenhouse gases.) Once the tree reaches maturity, though, it slows its consumption of carbon. By way of comparison, think of the appetites of a growing teenager and a senior citizen. When you’re done growing, you stop consuming as many calories. The best move, according to some tree-farm advocates, is to replace the mature tree with a new sapling and start the growth process over again.

http://articles.washingtonpost.com/2012-12-10/national/35745276_1_carbon-dioxide-tree-farms-christmas-tree

I tend to think that farm-grown trees have less impacts on the forests. The best trees are always selected to be cut, reducing the quality of the gene pool. Also, having so many people driving on muddy roads tends to cause drainage problems. People will always find ways to allow, or disallow things happening on public lands. One commenter summed it all up as a non-issue, climate-wise.