The Giving Trees
I climb a long series of ladders that lead to nothing but sky. Wind hums in the struts of the metal tower around me, causing it to vibrate like a giant guitar string and carrying the scent of warm pinesap, which saturates the air of Oregon's East Cascades in late summer. As I move higher, I pass arrays of high-tech gear that swallow samples of air, then analyze the amount of carbon dioxide in each gulp.
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Just behind me, her long, gray-shot hair whipping in the wind, Beverly Law steps onto the tower's topmost platform, 120 feet aboveground. Law, a professor of global forest science at Oregon State University, uses towers like this one, with their whirring gizmos, to track the forest's vital signs and reveal the complex relationship between trees and atmospheric carbon. She is the director of the AmeriFlux Network, an international collaborative project founded in 1996 that tracks the exchange of CO2, water vapor, and energy in all sorts of biomes throughout the Americas, from the Alaskan tundra to the Amazon rainforest. Her work, and that of the network, challenges conventional wisdom about how forests help to mitigate global warming.
In an era of climate crisis -- perfectly symbolized in the dwindling snowpack on the peaks of the Three Sisters, off to our southwest -- a clearer understanding of the role forests play in absorbing carbon is becoming crucial. Mass deforestation, particularly in tropical countries such as Brazil and Indonesia, accounts for more than 20 percent of annual greenhouse gas emissions. Meanwhile, recent studies show that Northern Hemisphere forests, now beginning to bulk up as they recover from centuries of logging, capture large amounts of CO2 from the atmosphere. Finding ways to preserve forests-wherever they may be-can buy us precious time to wean ourselves from fossil fuels.
I've spent much of my life surrounded by argument and anger over the fate of forests. For more than a decade I walked the woods as a wildlife biologist, learning to see them through the eyes of spotted owls, salamanders, tree voles-and landowners. My husband, a professional forester for the California Department of Forestry, spent several difficult years working to enforce state environmental regulations governing commercial timberland, taking flak from both loggers and eco-protestors. The people I've met along the way have always valued forests intensely, though often for very different reasons: as a renewable source of lumber and jobs, a haven for endangered wildlife, a source of clean water, a place of spiritual renewal. Now we all need to take a fresh look at how we judge the worth of our forests. The capture of CO2, an invisible gas, may be just as vital as an owl or a marten moving through the trees, as necessary as the shelters we build out of solid wood.
Plants take in CO2 and harness the energy of the sun to drive the chemical reaction that melds carbon with water, producing the substance of stem and leaf and releasing oxygen. When darkness or drought bring this process of photosynthesis to a halt, plants respire, just as humans do. That is, plants breathe in oxygen and exhale CO2. But over the long life span of trees in an undisturbed forest, huge reservoirs of carbon are stored for great stretches of time in the organic matter in soil as well as in living wood.
People who cut down trees for a living tend to measure their value in dollars and cents. Traditionally, the timber industry has seen mature forests, with massive trees left standing and big logs rotting on the ground, as examples of waste; replanted clear-cuts, by contrast, represent an ideal of economic productivity. Now global warming has forced foresters to address the impact of logging on the flow of carbon between forests and the atmosphere, and many in the industry have insisted that stands of young, fast-growing trees capture carbon more efficiently than do older forests. Using a recently developed technology called the eddy covariance method-more commonly known as eddy flux measurement-Bev Law and her colleagues are showing that those assumptions are wrong.
Thank you for this article--it's important to acknowledge the role that non-tropical forests play in carbon sequestration. Our organization is working on tree planting and environmental education programs in the Republic of Armenia, and we appreciate new research such as this that helps the public and even foresters to better understand these important ecosystem dynamics.
Kind regards,
Jason Sohigian
Armenia Tree Project
www.ArmeniaTree.org
Good information here. Over all the web site is well constructed. I would, however, suggest you change the orange(?) to some other color. The orange is hard to read.
did anyone hear the audio book of a new earth yet or the book it is on oprah web page. i am taking her class every monday night and they were also talking about the trees and the forrest too and stuff and this remind me how life is so precius to all of uf because trees breathe just like we do and they die just like we do if we arent taking care of us. i might write a poem a song about the universe on how the trees and everything is just like us too. do you people see it too
Nice article. Here are some additional resources explaining more about how climate change is likely to affect Pacific Northwest forests as well as how forest conservation and restoration (including sensible changes to this project) may help mitigate climate change. The report also helps debunk some of the flawed arguments used by logging advocates. http://tinyurl.com/2n96m5
http://www.slideshare.net/guestf419ee/debunking-myths-about-forest-carbo...
I wonder if there is any validation of the statement thta deforestation ,especially in tropicel areas, accounts for as much as 20 % of the greenhouse hases now being emitted.
jjjburton@verizon.net
Very informative. If you need more information about carbon offsets and reforestation projects, you can check out www.CarbonOffsetREVIEW.com.
Interesting article. Does this mean that "closed loop" strategies to utililze woody biomass for energy and have new growth compensate for the carbon removal of that woody biomass is not valid?
I would be interested in an analysis that takes a look at the rate of CO2 sequestration by forest age classes and compare it to their carbon emissions after harvest after factoring in carbon sequestration of typical forest products over their life cycle, to see what the net effect is.
Can this data be used to support maintenance and celebration of old healthy trees in cities? In our cities we strive for 40% canopy some day.... but individual trees are removed with impunity when a limb drops or a crack appears.... yet with maintenance the tree life can double or triple.. Can we use this carbon data to support advocacy for old trees being kept on city streets? please email to: guffguelph@gmail.com
I feel trees are crutical to our environment and that William Randolph Hurst did an awful crime against them. He bought acres and acres of trees to create more money for himself by processing the trees to paper. Then his scientist told him the best thing to make paper in nature was not a tree, but the marijuana plant. So this poweful man got a law passed in three days that outlawed the marijuana plant so he could use his trees to make paper. It's been that way since the 1930's. I feel it is time to turn this back around and legalize the marijuana plant for paper and save trees. I hear marijuana also makes fuel for vehicles. Chris Conrad ran for Governor of Kentucky and used hemp fuel in his car from one end of the state to the other. He did not win the election, but he proved that his fuel worked. And if your worried about people smoking it, Marijuana is safer to use than anything legal as in alcohol and tobacco. A cigarette was the most addictive drug I've ever done in my whole life, (I'm over 50). So please help save the planet and legalize marijuana for paper and fuel. Call Congress at 202-224-3121, 9 to 5, Monday thru Friday.
I was forced to have my beautiful fern pine cut down yesterday and I cried my eyes out. The HOA here gave me reason after reason when I would squash their purpose another reason would come up. The final reason had to do with roots & plumbing lines under the back porch. This tree gave me immeasurable pleasure. The birds, the screening, the shade, etc. My 4 year sobbed uncontrollably as it was being cut saying 'I want it to stay - it's a living thing" - My tree was a giving tree and I appreciate what this article says as it is what I believed. The 'garden committee' is not a very eco friendly garden committee for they are the one behind the demise of this tree. Long live trees.
Hi first I want to tell you that I really liked this article. And second I have a request to make; I just wrote this short story to post on my personal blog(just for fun)and I fell in love with the image of this tree in the top of the article, so I would like to have your permission to use it to illustrate my short story. My e-mail is danielle_oh_shin@yahoo.com, thanks a lot in advance.
hi reading this has been really informative, i am about to start working with schools in the uk to learn and act on co2 emissions, to help them visualise our relationship with the world around us i wanted to find out how many trees/plants it takes to keep each individual breathing? i know this is a bit simplistic but i need a way to make this accessable, if anyone can help me find this out it would be greatly apeciated.
best wishes
sorrel
I really liked this post. I also liked the comments & am with Norah who want to know if this science can be used for trees in urban areas. It is also unusual to read comments which don't go the way of "chop 'em all down!" In my municipality, the Council recommended just last week to chop down 59% of the street trees over 5 years, targeting especially the old ones (50-80 years). It is frightening that this is even being considered. Yes, they will replace with saplings, but by their own admission, a large percentage don't survive. I am scared for the wildlife who are struggling. Recent tree pruning for power-lines last spring where 1/3 to 1/2 of the flowers were removed resulted in a massive increase in nectar-eating birds fighting to feed off the food resources which remained. More of these articles please. We need them.
There appears to be a conscious unwillingness among many too many experts, thought leaders and opinion makers to acknowledge in open discussion the utter seriousness of humanity's global predicament, the consequences of which could be profound, and world-shattering in ways we cannot even imagine. That corporations keep growing toward the 'Wall' of unsustainability and governments continue to conspicuously ignore humanity's predicament by failing to prepare the human family for the recognizable, human-driven effects of the human overpopulation of Earth in our time is the most unfortunate of human determinations. Somehow the "will" has to be summoned to begin coming to grips with the human-induced global challenges that loom so ominously before us.
Individuals are called upon the reduce their ecological footprints and the family of humanity is implored to humanely limit the number of human feet on Earth.
Whatsoever the odds, and no matter how daunting are the human-driven global challenges which loom so ominously before the family of humanity in our time, each one of us has undeniable responsibilities to assume and solemn duties to perform as best we can with the steadfast hope of making the world we inhabit a better place for the children to live in.