I keep seeing comments that are really missing the point. This video isn't saying you shouldn't plant trees or that planting trees is just as bad as other human activity. Its just an exercise in considering how we impact the environment. The biggest takeaways are that the environment is complex and there is no bandaid solution to climate change.
The video is very correctly points out that the "cut it we just gonna replant it anyway" and the "we can emit x gigaton as an industry if we plant y thousand trees there" type of mentality is not at all as enviromentally sustainbale as the beneficiaries of such industries would like you to belive.
As a forestry student, I feel like this does a good job at talking about carbon storage in mature forests. I am also happy that they tackled canopy closure. I would like to see them tackle a more finicky topic like restorative logging. For example, 100 years of fire suppression in the West has shifted the fire regimes. In other words, one of the determinants for fire severity. For areas where a fire should occur every 20 years and clear out the forest floor, 90 years without fire creates higher tree density than is natural for the area. To correct this, the Forest Service (among other agencies) write a prescription for loggers to follow. To be more clear, they are not clear cutting. They are selectively removing trees without creating openings in the canopy. Furthermore, where there are clearcutting (at least for Montana) the Forest Service prescribes it to areas of forest that have become susceptible to disease and thus become more fire prone. There is a lot of complexity to this topic and one that I am eager to be more involved in for the future. I believe that we can have logging benefit our forests while also combating large scale, high severity fires brought on by climate change. I don't see logging as inherently evil or anti nature. I see it as a tool and like all tools, it can be misused and when it is, calamity is the result, such as the clearcutting of healthy mature forests in the Pacific Northwest.
I live in N Idaho in an area that has just had a logging project come through. On the hillside, seed trees of mainly white pine and tamarack were left and every strong wind that comes through takes more of them down because they are used to growing close together. Down lower, there is still a canopy growing closer together without the same wind damage. How much CO2 gets burned up in slash piles and would it not be better to chip it or make Huegel culture?
@@slotho122 Trees starting in shade grow very slowly. You want light to get to them to grow. The ideal would be to thin to 12 to 15 foot apart and then let the existing trees fill in.
I'm saddened you didn't mention the fact the Loss of Forest EcoSystems cannot simply be revived by planting endless rows of the same type of tree #MonoCulture
@@joshuachristofferson9227 one million percent truth. This is what I see in Oregon. I call them "dead forests" there are no birds in the monocrop forests and they are not right feeling.
Not to mention most of the time they plant male trees only.... go into any old growth forest and you see a plethora of typed of trees and they all work in biomimicry with one another through interaction with mycelium. You don't find the same type of mushrooms in the "fake forests" that you do in the old growth.
It’s not just about carbon. Trees regulate the climate, raise the water tables for more fresh drinking water and lower the sea level in the process. It’s always hotter without trees.
They’re not saying trees are bad, but without this knowledge you may cut the newly grown trees too early. Which ruins the whole point of having the tree be a carbon sink.
So during the Jurassic period which was some 8 degrees hotter than today, no polar ice caps and tropical forests on both poles, the trees kept it cooler?
@@Ninjaananas they are burning vast amounts of peat bogs in south America of all places! a lot burned to grow sugar. when burned the bogs release up to 1000 + years of stored carbon
Yes! Grasslands actually store MORE carbon than forests do, both in absolute and relative quantity, yet somehow they are never even mentioned as carbon sinks. Grasslands are also among the most biodiverse ecosystems on the planet, and for example in Europe so called semi-natural grasslands easily surpass old growth forests in terms of both species density and quantity. If we cover them with forests we lose potential or active carbon sinks, and a lot of biodiversity. But in the end wood is profitable, I guess that's why everybody is talking about forests.
I ain’t a scientist, but I think it would be interesting to see all of the 154 national forests and how each of them stack up, and how much carbon each stores. I live in Arkansas, and we have two national forests. The Ouachita and the Ozark-St Francis, so it’d be cool to see how much carbon they hold. I know the Ozark-St Francis won’t hold that much, considering that it only encompasses a few chunks of the Ozarks and the Boston mountains. I wish it was more like the Ouachita National Forest is a large chunk of the Ouachita Mountains. Though that could be because of all the Quartz. Lol
I agree. Several years ago I watched a documentary about Pleistocene Park in Siberia. There is a Russian scientist named Sergey Zimov that proved that trees growing in the north of Siberia also contribute to climate change. First I was in disbelief but he made some excellent points and could prove it. Because the trees are darker than snow they take up a little more heat of the sun. This heat is than transfered by the roots to the underground. This than causes the permafrost to melt a lot faster during the summer. Melting of permafrost releases methane and other gasses that contribute to global warming. Thousands of years ago Siberia was not full of trees but they where huge steppes with grazing animals. But those animals died of (probably by human overhunting) and this gave room for the trees to grow and the rest you can guess.
Agreed. Very interesting but left me wanting to know more. For example, if new forests are net carbon sources for the first twenty years, how does that compare to adjacent treeless areas where trees aren't planted? Are the planted areas at least smaller sources in the short term than areas left unplanted?
Funickfy, they are re building the Wester Flyer, Steinbecks trawler he used in the 60's.. They are buying mature white oak from a Menominee forest in Kentucky.. they use horse teams and they don't rip up the undergrowth when pulling selected logs out.. Very cool seeing how little they destroy the surrounding fauna when hauling tons of wood, maybe our ancestors were on to something.. even the manure had a net positive effect..
@@planegaper wow cool! Steinbeck's "Log from the Sea of Cortez" is my favorite of his books. Nonfiction. I don't recal if that's the boat he used though.
@@chertfoot1500 It is in deed , Western Flyer was the boat, they are re building her to new through a boat building school in Washington.. here's the link ruclips.net/channel/UCXIlPuc45MBAHorIYCft-WQ all done in white oak, and purple heart.. considering it's lineage that boat will be worth unseen money..
There should be a difference between the types of forests we're talking about here, and not just in terms of age. Is a young tropical forest different? A mangrove? A bamboo forest? Should we plant rapidly growing big plants instead of temperate forests instead, for short term significant gains? What about grasslands? Is the Pleistocene Park onto something?
hahaha you thought the tree planting contracts were made out of altruism ? ..it's a long term investment for politicians, that can rake in millions in lumber revenue in 30 or so years.. Otherwise they'd be planting different species.. Please go and bid on a tree planting contract in B.C...or any other big "green' project. See how fast the door gets shut in your face.. ask to see the bidding process, and you might get thrown in jail for trespassing..
They obviously didn't have time to cover everything. They did say that the forests of the Pacific Northwest are the MOST kick-ass carbon-wise and should be strategically preserved. I think: "how?" next, is maybe the most important thought. We need alternate building materials to all that Northwest Timber. Certainly Bamboo, but also Cannabis/Hemp for insulation and structure are part of that. Mud/cement brick type things. Did you know that Aircrete, a fantastic insulating version of concrete used world wide, is more or less illegal in California because it "needs to be tested for earthquake safety" even though it has earthquake safe versions with good track records already used in places like Japan and Brasil that also have earthquakes. It's almost worst than Newpaper guy Hearst helping make cannabis illegal so they would use his trees for paper instead. Similar, anyway.
I live in Ontario and I cut my forest constantly. Mainly just the dead wood but living trees too sometimes. I totaly agree about keeping the canopy closed and never ever clear cutting. Selective cutting is the way to go. That is the best way to produce the most wood per acre for sure. Thinning in winter also feeds the deer and keeps their populations up, it works for rabbits too. Burning dead wood is essential in my view to reduce the risk of forest fires. My favourite fires are for heating my home and water as well as making that sweet sweet maple syrup!
The video's title is misleading because the question is not satisfactorily answered. Data is data, but there is no explanation for the mechanisms behind observed differences. I suspect it's a matter of volumes. Old growth forest has a greater volume for carbon-capturing processes (plus stored carbon) compared to the volume of the adjacent soil that is respiring (devouring fallen carbon). New growth has a small volume compared to adjacent soil. To understand the principle, consider how much more food a large adult needs to maintain "volume" when compared to a small child. The salient question, then, is how to optimize photosynthetic carbon capture AND how to restore the enormous amount of carbon that has been lost from soils globally.
Once a forest has a canopy, it pulls more carbon. Trees + canopy + soil = high biodiversity = carbon sink. She doesn't get into detail about the canopy, but canopies can offer extensive biodiversity. The canopy also helps the soil maintain moisture. Moist soil increases the bio diversity in the soil. Trees - soil = low biodiversity = carbon producer. If a forest doesn't have a canopy (tree tops that touch), the carbon release mechanisms in the soil beat what's the carbon sink mechanisms of the trees. Not all the info is in this standalone episode, but knowing about canopies & moist soil made it very clear to me.
@@richardmanuel3072 Then, what they referred to as a "dry forest" is not merely a matter of climatic zone, but of shading/exposure of the soil? Shading, if I understand you correctly, helps to maintain soil moisture and to reduce carbon loss from the soil.
This is what I was thinking would also play a part on total carbon sequestration of trees. But I would suspect surface area over volume since the inside of a tree is deadwood. It's only the outer layers that are actively processing carbon, with the bark being most active.
@@richardmanuel3072 I'm pretty sure that the researchers said they examined different densities of new growth. Are talking about the forest or the trees? Individually, it would make sense that a tree has to reach a certain size before it has a net negative carbon footprint. And that would be independent of the surrounding trees. It would also make sense that the sum of the trees would be greater than individual trees. That they would increase the carbon sequestration as they combine efforts.
@@briand8090 True, but the total area (volume actually) of active tissue and leaves is greater in higher volume trees -- taller, greater circumference, larger crown, larger roots. It's a while since I did botany, but I thought that photosynthesis occurs in the leaves and that phloem, xylem, and cambium, not protective bark, are responsible for transporting water and nutrients, and for providing cells for growth.
@@chertfoot1500 I was not referring to CCing old growth, but rather to CCing in general. While I believe they still cut large parcels, it is more like in a checkerboard pattern, to reduce the problems of regrowth (lots of new trees coming naturally from more mature trees on the perimeter), soil erosion (soils are caught by surrounding forested areas, habitat disruption, etc. The idea now (I think) is that if you need to cut 100 acres of trees, do it in 10 acre small parcels, not a 100-acre parcel that become VERY problematic. You get the same amount of lumber and costs will be slightly higher, but you don't have anywhere near the same environmental impact. Not sure about all this. If I am wrong, someone please let me know. (But know that if you do respond without references, I will likely Google to find out REAL information. Thus, most "Twitter meme" responses will be ignored.
Ok but how does it compare to the amounts given off by the respiration of the soil without any trees? There's only half of the picture depicted here, and the trees themselves aren't giving off the carbon. It's clear the older the forest is, the more carbon it stores per unit time, but that's all that is really answered here.
I think it's a matter of volumes. Old growth forest has a greater volume for carbon-capturing processes (plus stored carbon) compared to the volume of the adjacent soil that is respiring (devouring fallen carbon). New growth has a small volume compared to adjacent soil.
@@compassroses the carbon released by the soil is carbon that's been stored there by the forest that's been cut, not the young seedlings. Trees, however young, will be a net carbon sink as long as they're alive and healthy.
I believe their point is to show that preserving old forests is much more important than planting new ones right now. I don't think they intended to picture planting trees as a bad thing. (Ok, the title is a bit clickbaity...)
@@nisnber5760 It’s not click bait and it’s not moronic. It needs more science done to it. Conservatives always look for the easy way out. And they’re always stuck on the “Lost Cause”.
Yes! Your intro brought a tear to my eye. Trees have been here for us all along, and we just keep cutting down forrest lands, paying no attention to the effects it's having on our own well being, the planet, and everything else. The trees have great power in this world, as do the mycelium. 🌱🍄
Perhaps a bit more explanation on the source of this carbon imbalance is due: microbial respiration in young, open forests releases carbon already in the soil, presumably from earlier generations of trees. Mature forests store more carbon that they release in their soil, making its organic content greater every year. Forest is not trees only.
I'm so confused by all that. How can a forest accumulate carbon indefinitely without the fossilisation processes that used to occur at the carboniferous era? Shouldn't the biomass of a forest be limited, among other things, by the available solar power which is, on average, a constant? Wouldn't it lead to some kind of asymptotic growth? Isn't the biomass of a twenty years old forest greater than a zero years old forest? If that is the case, how could the forest be releasing carbon all this time? Where did the carbon come from during these initial 20 years?
@@marcoskunrath5914 This was indeed not a very clear video. As far as I understand, the "carbon positive" young forest is that of the producers' homeland, the USA, where clear-cutting old forest is a common practice. Then net-positive carbon emission comes from microbial respiration in organic material accumulated on the former forest floor by trees now gone (their dead leaves etc). It takes time for newly planted saplings to start growing fast enough that their carbon accumulation outpaces this respiration. Solar power limits the total rate of photosynthesis, that is, accumulation of organic carbon. Initially most of it is in live biomass, but with time more and more of it accumulates in soil from various kinds of tree detritus. That said, there are environments (e.g. Amazon forest) where growth is limited by inorganic nutrients in very poor soil. Those forests are more or less closed circle. Look up "Soil carbon sequestration" - there are various ways to increase the content of organic carbon in soil, making it both more productive and turning it into a carbon sink. But, as all similar measures, its effectiveness if the big picture of climate change is limited: the only real long term solution id drastically limiting emission. We do have the technology to do that in all sectors: transport, energy production, manufacture of steel and cement, agriculture. What is missing is the will of entrenched financial interests to relinquish their position.
@@bazoo513 I just read some of Dr. Law’s and others papers and they are much clearer than the video. I think I get her point now. Forests take much much longer to reach equilibrium than we previously thought. Thanks for the heads up on Soil carbon sequestration. That hasn't crossed my mind.
@@bazoo513 Thanks for the explanation of the carbon flows! In the USA today it is unusual to cut old growth forest, since we already cut most of it. Remaining old growth is often protected, or in hard to reach places. In my area of New Mexico much of the forest was cut in the late 1800s when the railroad came through.
@@bazoo513 we all use a huge amount of carbon based energy. blaming producers is like a city person blaming a farmer because he uses more energy to make a living. i am quite sure the big energy users switch to more effiecent systems when it pays to do it. after all it affects their bottom line much more than a office .
Of course, but the most important takeaway any of us should have is to STOP CUTTING DOWN OUR FORESTS. Leave the old growth ones alone, especially, and.instead grow newer forests to cut down if truly necessary.
I want to give Kudos to this. I have been saying this since the 1980's. This is the first document I have seen that even mentions the forest let alone give any numbers about it.
Did you run, The Late Show with David Letterman band, and also others? Good to know, that you have been giving voice to this. The trees need spokespersons. Trees tend to be all bark, and no bite.
So basically try to close the canopy sooner. Then they grow vertically and store more carbon. I would like to also have some data from sustainable forests, where they cut only the dead trees and thin out just enough so neighbor trees don't die.
That, actually, is the best approach, if the wood harvested is used in a way that does not return the carbon in the atmosphere (e.g. as building material).
That also aids in a bigger and faster traffeling forrest fire once they catch on fire. There is a good medium. How about we just copy a healthy older Forrest?
@@CHMichael My post has the intention to find a way to replicate the results faster than the natural development of an area to an old forest, that may take decades to happen. Anyway, I don't mean row thinning, just removing one tree when two or more are too close together and they are starting to show signs of hindered growth.
@@user-rb7ns9yj5y Actually, if you cut trees for timber and use the rest for paper or something, and cut only mature trees near the end of their life, you sequester their carbon for centuries and leave room for young trees to soak up some more from the atmosphere. But clear-cutting and leaving most of the biomass to rot is the worst. Cement, brick and steel production are all very energy intensive. Cement, in addition, release more CO2 during production. However, for all three there are new low-carbon technologies, especially if using clean energy (renewables or nuclear).
I have been saying for years that Arbor Day should be one of our most important holidays. Early settlers come to the East Coast and defoliate to build homes, Then, down the road Oklahoma becomes a dust bowl. By chance? Not likely.
Oklahoma and the Midwest area in general turned into a dustbowl because the mega herds of bison were all killed off. It is explained really well in A Sand County Almanac by Aldo Leopold, particularly the section called The Land Ethic
Fun fact: plastic is 80% carbon, and is virtually indestructible. Therefore, the great Pacific plastic patch is a huge carbon sink. The only problem is that this carbon came directly from oil, not from the atmosphere :o(
Mass extinction and the end of mammals will open many opportunities for life to evolve into. Humans are a temporary problem. Life will go on without us.
Yes, they hurt the surface, the water, the atmosphere and sometimes have effects below ground. In southwestern Pennsylvania where I live the fracking is fairly intense. Just this past year an old natural gas well was repurposed as fracking waste water injection well. It is on a hilltop about a mile from us and is near a stream that joins the Allegheny River. The intake for our municipal water plant is a short distance downstream, When an accident inevitably happens it will be a real mess. Pittsburgh also gets its water from the river downstream. Just my two-cents but this doesn’t have to be this way. Renewable energy is mostly pollution free including all kinds of greenhouse gases.
@@Sara-bb2qg "Net zero for many windmills is at least 20 year of use." Eh, modern wind turbines take around 6 months to become net zero. Of course the answer depends on where you are and what is being replaced, but 20 years is way off. Another way of looking at it is the GHG intensity of wind electricity. This is generally between 10-50 g CO2 per kWh (you can check NREL if you are looking for a source on this). It's an order of magnitude lower than electricity from natural gas (the cleanest fossil fuel). The mining effort required is significant, and there will definitely be supply chain problems. But what is the alternative? Just burning fossil stuff and pretend the effects are manageable?
The video's credits say "Original Production Funding Provided by Oregon Community Foundation". Doesn't exactly scream neutrality, does it? I wish more *science* went into this video. Like for example, is there any feasible way to reduce the microbial respiration rate, to reduce its carbon sourcing. Is there a way to manage the "gaps" in the new forest to make it be a carbon sink sooner? And perhaps I missed it, but when the new forest is a net source, by about 20%, what percent as a *sink* does it become when it's a few decades old? Also 20%? More? I think a lot was missed here, except the singular, triple-reinforced idea of _don't touch that old forest !_
After doing a little research about new growth, it appears (I am not a "tree scientist") that the current thinking is that new growth IS a carbon sink. Like almost any issue related to CC, it's complicated and this video seems to imply that the research is done only in a small area in the PNW. And what's wrong with cutting and releasing the C over a period of 30 years? Seems like a rather long time to me. I also wrote a comment above asking if the creation of new soil, forest litter, etc. does not also sink carbon in the little critters and bacteria that grow and feed on this stuff. BTW, just because something is funded by "something" does not mean it CANNOT be objective or add to the body of knowledge. You just need to keep in mind that today, most "science" is backing one agenda or another. Einstein, Heisenberg, and the Curies would be appalled, but what can you do?
@@dangoerke51 Releasing C over 30 years is still putting it into the atmosphere. There is some work in sequestration by increasing the organic fraction of soil. Not an expert on this. What I’ve seen suggests that it has a potentially big capacity (tons per acre) but longevity is unknown, just like the forests. Natural systems have evolved to cycle carbon, so it shouldn’t be surprising that there aren’t a lot of long term sinks out there.
@@J-berg They show one site, and say many sites have been studied. Is that incomplete, in some bad way? Science is always incomplete, we don't know everything. The title is kinda clickbait though. They should put more links in the description, but they put this one in a comment, and it covers your objection, perhaps: "Ecosystem carbon dioxide fluxes after disturbance in forests of North America" Amiro et al 2010
In Germany there existed once a Woodcutting Method called Haubergswirtschaft where the Forest was partitioned into 20 to 32 Areas and every Year one part of the Forest would be cut in Winter when most of the Trees Energy is in its Roots. Also they would be cut in an Angle so that Rain could flow down the Stumps and it wouldn't rot, also the Branches and 'useless' Wood would be burned carefully around the Stumps without hurting the Roots to bring back Carbon and and Nutrients into the Soil. Afterwards the part of the Forest would be protected against wild Animals that would eat the new Shoots and the Forest would be left alone for 20 to 32 Years to regenerate from the Shoots In that Time it would only be allowed to collect Mushrooms in that Area and let small Animals roam like Chicken after a few Years where they can't eat the Shoots anymore. Maybe then the Forest would capture more Carbon faster, because it doesn't has to start from the beginning. Yet when I had been there the Trees there had been pretty chaotic and quirky because they were mostly used for Firewood and to be turned into Coal, but also for Construction: Beeches for Coal and they were growing in all Directions and Oaks for Construction that grew more normally.
Interesting, I wonder what the growing conditions are? There are some very long rotation harvest experiments in Oregon that do store lots of carbon for generations but still yield significant harvest.
I love that this series is filmed mostly in Oregon and Washington! It’s so cool to see my little corner of the world used as examples of what it takes to have healthy and productive forests!
Yeah, but the notion that timber harvest is going to stop in the PNW anytime soon defies the pushback that would happen. The best way to stop tree harvest is consumer driven purchases like bamboo and hemp alternatives for paper. Alternative building materials need to be developed to attain the structural integrity of tree wood. I hope we can advance in that area. Would be a boon to agriculture, too.
@@caesars7hills892 Your comment is not relevant to the original post or very friendly. Why did you comment? Are you against environmental education? Do you believe those who want environmental education should also actively provide environmental remediation in the areas they teach about? Should someone who wants more education about fisheries management *also* be required to maintain quotas and enforce bycatch laws? OR ARE YOU JUST A TROLL?
Here in germany i am not aware of the practise of "clear cuts" besides when some storm or insect investation made us cut certain areas down to prevent spread or just to make reforestation easier. What is done here is a Förster(dude responsible for the wellbeing of the woods and animal life within) goes through the woods and marks now and then certain trees for being cut down. The categories he uses for that again are these trees healthy, do they take away growth areas from younger trees and many more of which i myself as layman am not aware of. Point being, besides maybe economic effciency, i don't see a reason for clear cuts. Additional to that mono cultures which was seen especially economicly profitable, are now more and more a thing of the past. Softwood and broadleaf are mixed together for a more robust, stable and healthy symbiotic environment. One challange though now due to temperatures rising is which new types of trees we may want to settle, as some of the original types have more and more problems. I feel this as especially hurtfull to many of us as we dont want our original native trees to go away as i see it they are pretty much part of us and our culture, but sadly we don't have much of a choice either. If we don't adept things would get worse. Now not everything is shiny here in germany where it comes to our forrests either. Politicians much too often turn a blind eye to when quotas are crossed and more trees are cut down than agreed upon. The economic needs seem many times to dictate policy. This is something with the new government i hope we could get a grip on.
Clear cut is for economuc efficiency. If you take only a few trees from forest, you spend as much work hours with small machines and human labours as clear cuttin and collecting all trees with big machines.
@@juhajuntunen7866 I guessed as much, what i am but more interested in is if that practise is environmentaly less or more beneficial. If we can put in some more work, have therefor jobs in that sector, but also the benefits of an on avverage older forrest as described here in this vid. Shouldn't we try to do it that way then? It is said nearly 50% of all jobs will fall away in the next 20 to 30 years due to the impact of AI systems, this could be one way to gain some jobs again and have a positive impact on climate change.
@@kinngrimm Wjere I live in Canada, clear cutting happens quite a bit. They do plant trees where they cut, but it is typically just the preferred species that is planted. It's a very weird feeling when you drive past a section of forest that has been there your entire life only to find an empty field.
@@Briggsian from steroetypes out of american movies the canadian is often painted as the wood cutter with the typical flanell shirts :) Is there any truth to that? Another more important question though, what about erosion? Aren't areas which are clear cut especially endangered to erosion if not even complet mount sides being washed away? While there are the longtermclimate change relatevant impacts, i guess in comparison rather short term negativ environmental impacts still could be relevant too, right?
@@kinngrimm In my areas, it's not so much erosion that's the concern from clear cutting, it's flooding. Trees help to keep snow and ice from melting too quickly when there is a thaw during the spring. When areas are clear cut, all that frozen water melts and can quickly overflow waterways which is a big problem in a province where the majority of people live along rivers. Hydroelectric dams can control the flow to an extent, but at a certain point it just gets out of hand.
While everyone keeps hyper focusing on trees the Great plains which is one of the biggest carbon sinks in the world is being taken over by pavement at a alarming rate matter in fact its only 1/8 of what it used to be size was if you look at old 1800s maps it stretched from Missouri to the rocky mountains and even in the flat land passes in the mountains it was for a good distance on the western side of the rocky mountains.
Ironic because in fact the area described was a grassland the forest I belive stoped around the 100 longitude line. When the grasses were over grazed and fires controlled much became brush covered the great forest pre-Columbian did not cover the great plains because fires burnt back the brush and huge Buffalo herds trampled brush and fertilized grassland see mr savory's video on holistic range management
Suggestion: 1) Grow denser in one area 2) Once reaches saturation, cut half of them to make room for further growth 3) Continue trimming until forrest matures If the difference between matured and young forrest is 1) the density of canopy, 2) the coverage is the cost of higher oxygen intake, and 3) land space is a contrain, we should make more effective use of land.
In Brazil it' being done and we call it "Forest Management" It's a similar concept but numbers came from development-based equations for each single area/species
This is why in a permaculture design we focus upon the under story and nursery trees. Must plant poly culture because what we need is mature plantings. For trees it's a decade, but many perennials reach maturity in a few years. Then you have annuals. Add in rotational grazing in into that forest, you will be sequestering carbon inside the year. Regenerative agriculture works.
I got muted in an environment-focused FB group for pointing out that planting new trees isn’t the solution to removing carbon from the atmosphere that will fix everything for us. 🙄
It goes against dogma. Plus, pro-logging individuals always try to infiltrate those groups. They want to put the responsibility back on us, instead of us seeking out logging bans. A little manipulation helps them to avoid hurtles to contracts to logging contracts.
It goes against dogma. Plus, pro-logging individuals always try to infiltrate those groups. They want to put the responsibility back on us, instead of us seeking out logging bans. A little manipulation helps them to avoid hurtles to logging contracts.
@@rustyschackleford5800 That was literally my point, they were mocking the idea that we might want to pursue other methods of removing carbon from the atmosphere in addition to planting trees.
When I am flying over southwest Arkansas, you can see where the woods were replanted by the patterns of the trees. There are no gaps and they have done an amazing job or repopulating the forests. It’s done in small sections and appears a lot of care goes into managing it all
Trees are the kindest things I know They do no harm they simply grow They give us shade from leaves above And in return all they want is Love 💕🌲💕🌲💕🌲💕🌲💕🌲💕🌲
When you were filming the first part of the video I was thinking, "I bet she is in eastern Oregon", and I am glad I was spot on :D Hopefully you had fun visiting my neck of the woods (pardon the pun, sorry/not sorry). I'm further south than where you were (Ashland), but Oregon is a gorgeous place all over. Cheers! :)
Hi! Lots of the production crew if Weathered is from Oregon. We live in Portland and spend most of our time on the rainy west side but loooooove to visit the dry eat side.
The question left unanswered is what to do with young growth forests, particularly those whose mycorhizal communities have been disrupted by previous agricultural use. Is there a better use for that land, from the perspective of trying to inhibit climate disruption? Also, a recent experiment reported in peer reviewed from northern India which followed a long term tree planting project showed that most of the planted trees died, and, in any case, the planting did not affect the composition of the forest to any significant degree.
They Skip over a vital question: how does young growth compare to no growth. Cause sure young growth VS the ground is negative. But is no growth VS the ground even more negative? If so then even young growth has its use in reducing carbon emissions.
The question wasn't so much skipped over as briefly touched on. They mention that the young growth forests respire about 80% of the carbon back into the air, meaning there is a slight reduction in carbon output from the land, but the young growth forest is nevertheless a carbon source. She also says "There's nothing wrong with young forests." and that they're a long-term valuable tool to efficiently reducing carbon, but I think the point from this video is that we need to rethink the conventional "wisdom" that it's okay to clear cut older forests because we can just replace them with what we thought were efficient carbon capturing young forests.
I’m really glad the planting of forest is starting to be discussed as a climate solution. But it’s also important to remember that planting the right species is as important as planting trees. Many of these forests shown are monocultures. They look to be all the same genus, and probably the same species. We need to remember the earlier stages of succession will shelter young trees, and allow the trees to grow in better. And for Pete sake, in dry climates, please start composting the wood (on site) which starts these wildfires.
There is no way to widely compost wood in a large dense forest. Any effort to put out any (naturally occuring) forest fires makes forests more dense then they would otherwise naturally be if left to burn normally. It's quite a difficult problem to solve. We'd basically need massive acres of rotating, regular, calibrated controlled burns in order to fix the forest overdensity problem. Doable but not easy, and not great for air quality
@@weareallbornmad410 a few channels I’d recommend are: Shamus O’Leary, Geoff Lawton- Greening the desert, California gardening/ next level gardening or whatever his channel is called now, and Andrew Millison- India’s Water Revolution.
@@oakinwol true, but a lot of people have “woods” at the back of their yard. That’s a good point about rotation burning. It’s a much better solution than what’s going on in arid climates now…
There are a thousand reasons why planting more trees and protecting forests is a good idea. Helping to reduce the carbon in the atmosphere is not one of them. You would need an area about 2.5x the size of the Earth to offset human emissions.
This seems like a very selective idea of what 'young forest' is. I know from experience that commercial plantations are over-planted and close the canopy within a few years after which they are progressively thinned out. By the same token forests that are planted to capture and sequester carbon would be managed accordingly.
This is a great point and one that is extremely briefly mentioned in the film... I wish we had time to go deeper! Bev has done similar work in plantations and found about the same numbers. Although they are densely planted, there's still a lot more soil respiration than sequestration by the forest. Some fast growing forests like on the west side of Oregon can become carbon sinks in less than 20 years but globally, she told us that 10-20 years is just how long it takes. Interestingly, plantations and private forests managed for timber production or carbon sequestration do a better job of sequestering carbon with longer rotations. She found that a 90-year rotation rather than a 40 to 60-year rotation could yield similar production but sequester way more carbon.
@@ElementalWildfire Thanks for your reply. I own some farmland in New Zealand which has recently yielded around 900 tonnes per hectare of radiata pine after a 25 year rotation which will give you some idea of the *gross* carbon uptake. However you may be interested to know that I haven't replanted pines and I'm actively returning the land to native forest on a permanent basis.
Wow, that's very interesting. What made you decide to make the change? And will you still harvest wood from the native forest in the future? There are some very cool selective harvest 'ecoforestry' operating in Oregon when I live that do get significant yield with very long rotations. Often longer than a human lifetime for certain trees.
@@ElementalWildfire Thanks for your interest; The radiata pine had been planted on marginal (steep and eroded) pasture adjacent to small patches of native 'bush' and fairly soon after I acquired the young plantation I decided that once the pines were mature and harvested I'd encourage the native plants to re-establish themselves. The interesting thing is, until they close the canopy and out-compete the natives, the pines are actually quite good primary cover provided you actively thin them out. The reason why I'm doing this is because like you, I love nature in its natural balanced state and this is my pathetic attempt to right that balance. To answer your other question, no I don't want selective logging to take place because it appears to be a very energy intensive process; apart from which I'll be long dead before it's viable.
We cannot feasibly stop all logging, so the solution lies in making the logger responsible for offsetting the lost production by replacing with new trees AND offsetting their carbon-capturing deficiency by funding other methods of carbon capturing.
Keeping old growth forests and planting new forests helps wildlife. Here in North Carolina, European "green" funds are being used to clear cut forests to make biomass pellets for Europe. Pretty hopeless situation when "green" funds are being abused. Sadly, temperature rise is already "baked" in. I don't know the time line but this will occur: Permafrost/methane hydrate will cause temps to rise too high causing wildfires etc. and phytoplankton will stop making oxygen as the Oceans warm. These two effects in either order will cause oxygen in the atmosphere to drop to 11% starting at high altitudes. Small fauna and some flora will survive at 11% oxygen. New normal 5-10 million years.
That's dumb. What method captures more carbon than the energy it needs to function? How can a logger hope to offset the lost forest and how would the consumer afford that product if they did? Leave the forests alone. Use farmed wood and urban wood. Why are arborists paying to dump high value wood into landfills? There are solutions to be found within our waste but the solution is not to lay waste to our forests and planet whilst patting ourselves on the back for our clever accounting.
The idea is to force companies to be accountable at the cost of some figure recommended by scientists and manipulated by Congress. The cost will get passed down to the consumer and demand for reclaimed wood will rise, creating new opportunities in the marketplace. That is Capitalism, and it is not going anywhere, so you have to work within it.
Trouble is, it takes minutes to hack down a mature tree that has been flourishing for decades... possibly even 100s of years. Planting a 6 inch seedling isn't going to make up for that loss. Planting thousands of 6 inch seedlings isn't going to make up for the loss of 1 mature tree... not for decades...
We're not going to die in 20 years from climate change so properly planting of trees and better land management is a good thing to do. It does need to be done properly.
Okay, first of all, a little constructive criticism: 0:50 I doubt that is actually an old growth forest - there should be no more than about 50 to 60 trees per acre in an OGF, you got more than that in the foreground. It is very difficult to find any true old growth forests, though, as we've destroyed them. Other than that, very good reporting! This is so disheartening, we have managed to screw things up in so many ways that fixing these problems is now extremely daunting. Echoing all the others, please produce more of this reporting on forests.
Thanks Rick! Re: old growth the definition of the term does seem to be a bit subjective but I'm not going to argue with Bev when she calls it old growth. And, as the producer of Weathered I reeeeally want to produce more on this subject. The more views it gets, the more likely that is so please share the video with your networks!
@@Num6er47 welp there's no question that fossil fuels release more carbon dioxide than land use like logging, but according to the IPCCC land use is the second largest contributor to climate change so it's not nothing.
@@ElementalWildfire Yeah, I forgot to send links to this video yesterday, I'll get on that. Please do produce more of this content, there are a ton of questions that need to be answered - and we all have to pitch in and fix this situation. Cheers!
I'd barely even class where they were stood as a forest, the tree coverage was nowhere near dense enough. Also all the trees looked identical, it looked more like a plantation than a natural forest.
the way homes are built these days, "long term" wood products like lumber are not going to be used very long before being replaced, due to shoddy construction, and trends in remodeling.
Hang on, I get the feeling that you're comparing young forests vs old, but not new young forests vs unforested land. *That* is the comparison one must make to determine if young forests are carbon sinks. I can't imagine growing and cutting an acre of pole timber does *not* sequester carbon vs other agricultural uses?
I take it that unforested means grassland. To me, the point of this video is asking if logging and using wood products can have a net zero carbon footprint if there is replantation. It's not about turning grass land into forests. Forests have the problem or fire releasing carbon and the use of wood products releas carbon. Grassland has the problem of grazing animals releasing it as methane which is a more potent green house gas and cutting grass releases the carbon. Grassland is also more prone to erosion. As far as I can tell, as carbon sinks, old forests > grasslands > young forests > barren land. Don't know If you watched the whole video but they said young forests aren't a good carbon sink because they don't recapture released carbon. Old forests do because the canopy is large enough to stop the co2 leaving the area.
Obviously the gaps in young forest are a huge problem because the relatively unprotected soil is still releasing carbon. Obviously there needs to be diverse native plant grow introduced when the trees are replanted after cutting. I have personally seen how little care is given to replanting and the right plants will self propagate. Industry standards aside I have seen crews poison around the replants to suppress the groundcover so even less care is needed.
Great video, something I'd never thought about but makes a lot of intuitive sense. And not surprising that established forests are more efficient. I wonder if this research could inform any planting strategies that could maximize the canopy coverage in those first 10-20 years and minimize the soil respiration.
Can someone explain as how the young forest are still being called “source of carbon”. The net carbon increase in area would be when NEW carbon is released in the atmosphere. (By carbon I mean CO2). So, let’s says, we start with a completely empty land. The net carbon released is 0 cause nothing is making CO2. Now we put in new young trees there. They start absorbing CO2 to make their 95% of mass. So, they are absorbing Co2. Then the animals and microbes eat the dead parts of those trees and release the CO2 back into the atmosphere. So, how can you say the new forrest is source of carbon? You started from a neutral source (empty land) to a carbon cycle where new trees absorb and microbes release. At best this new forrest would be neutral source of carbon, not a positive source of carbon. So, I think the scientist here has misrepresented that information. It’s not like more CO2 is being released by the newer forrest. You are using the same amount of Carbon from atmosphere, converting into trees and then converting into animals and microbes and releasing the same amount (at best) to the atmosphere. Better way fo saying would be that new forrest are near 0 % efficient at capturing carbon while older forrest at at some high percent say (70 or above %) efficient at capturing carbon. So, What am I missing here?
Carbon is one part of the picture and can't be looked at in isolation without the atmosphere, water cycle and soil. There is a biotic pump effect that draws moisture inland cooling and moderating weather. Also from some trees stomata there is a hydroscopic bacteria cloud condensing nuclei responsible for Most of the world's rain. These aspects are little know but very important as water influences 95% of the earth's heat dynamic. To learn more: soil microbiologist Walter Jehne, hydrologist Dr Michal Kravcik or journalist Judith D Swartz are great resources!
@@sureshkrjsl Just guessing here, but for this specific forest type with these tree species (that can really only become a new tree from a seed-they will not readily regenerate from a stump, basal, or copice sprout as some tree species will when they are younger), my hunch is that the now dead stumps, roots, and leaf/needle litter of the mature harvested trees are breaking down, releasing carbon, while the new trees are begining to grow. So, maybe if the video authors see this comment they could weigh-in, I do not think these experiments start from a pure "bare land" condition that is completely absent of past vegetation due to the fact that trees require a certain annual precipitation threshold to survive and grow well, so these experiments must be performed in a climate that can support a forest-certainly within a landscape that supported a forest in the past. The type of soil these experiments are conducted upon could also probably play a huge role in the variation of potential carbon storage outcomes through time as well. Anyway, so, at some point the carbon being released by those harvested tree stumps and roots probably reach equilibrium and are overtaken with the growth of the new forest, causing this observed 20ish year decline in the total carbon stored after harvesting while the new forest growth begins. Forest types that are adapted to disturbances like tornadoes and derechos, i.e. the eastern hardwood forests of the US, may have a slightly different time or capacity profile of carbon storage/release after logging or weather events due to their cool forest disturbance adaptations. I would very much like to see this experiment replicated and presented from the standpoint of different forest types and at different ages within these forest types to satisfy my curiousity (and in different soil types too!). Check out the oak-hickory forest type (as a broad example) to see what I'm referring to if you aren't already familiar.
I'm curious as to how food forest would fair? In a well planed food forest there is very little open areas. It has the canopie trees, understory trees, plus it grows food. A win win if you ask me.
@@Zaihanisme according to Dr Koonin in his book "Unsettled" most of the emissions from animals comes from fermentation (the front end) not the back end (cow farts). So humans and animals that don't ferment wouldn't contribute much.
Kudos for boiling things down to nine minutes, but complicated it is. A multi-decade career as a Cascadian forester has led me to conclude that as far as carbon goes, growing timber and manufacturing wood products when accompanied by active forest management is -- at worst -- about carbon neutral, and depending on how we humans use wood, potentially of significant carbon benefit. If anyone wonders or cares how slowly simmering the question has led me to a somewhat differing conclusion, my summary follows: Every square metre of ground receives the same amount of solar energy (more or less, its complicated: MoLiC). Chlorophyll mediates the photosynthetic conversion of atmospheric CO2 to “fixed” carbon compounds in plants (MoLiC). If zero solar energy reaches the ground then the chloroplasts in the algae, moss, herb, shrub and tree layers above have in combination been 100% efficient in capturing the solar energy through photosynthesis. If not, and in reality, some of the energy gets through to warm the soil and some is reflected back towards the sky (MoLiC). Thus, the darker it is at the ground, the more CO2 captured. In the professor’s young forest most of the solar energy is reaching the ground to be in part reflected away and in part warm the soil. Warmer soil accelerates microbial respiration and CO2 release, until the soil becomes shaded again. Some of the plant layers (moss, algae, herbs) produce fixed carbon that is rapidly decomposed and in part respired back to the atmosphere and in part incorporated into the soil to be released more gradually (weeks to millennia) when soil microbes exploit the carbon for their respiration needs. Meanwhile the upper plant layers also produce rapidly decomposed structures (leaves, etc.), but additionally fix some of the carbon as wood (cellulose + lignin). If this wood is protected from moisture and O2 it cannot be decomposed (MoLiC). Hence tree stems elevated off the ground and sealed within bark are slow to release their stored carbon. It is the fate of the wood that is key to question of carbon. If we harvested the wood and could somehow fling it into the vacuum of space where there is no moisture, O2 or microorganisms then its carbon would never be released back into the planet’s atmosphere. If we promptly reforested the harvest site so that the solar energy capture and conversion by trees was optimized through most of the planned rotation age, then theoretically twice (MoLiC) as much carbon (wood on site plus wood stored in space) is now not in the atmosphere. At the end of a second rotation, 3X carbon not in the atmosphere. Third rotation 4X, etc. Of course flinging tree stems into space would take a lot of energy which would negate any carbon storage benefit. However, we could store the wood indefinitely (MoLiC) by storing it terrestrially where there is little O2, such as under water or by burying. But an even better solution might be to store it in use. While the professor dismisses this by saying only 20% of wood makes it into long term forest products, this percentage varies (MoLiC) and really is up to us humans. If we replaced carbon-unfriendly structural products such as concrete, steel and aluminum with wood (CLT panels, lumber) wherever possible, the percentage would significantly increase. If we re-used the wood at end of structural life, the storage period would be further extended. Paper packaging can replace plastic and styrofoam derived from fossil fuels. Instead of discarding short-lived wood products and letting them decompose, if we burned them to make electricity that displaces fossil fuel electricity, more fossil carbon would be left in the ground. Similarly, along the production chain from forest to mill, wood residuals (branches, bark, sawdust, black liquor) can be used as replacements for fossil fuel energy. In the forest, active forest and woody fuel management can reduce the probability and/or severity of wildfire and thus reduce CO2, nitrous oxide and particulate releases to the atmosphere. Wood is good. Google it.
@@DSAK55 And where to you think algae gets its O2 from? It's from (to a very large extent) the absorption of CO2 in the atmosphere. Another example, I guess, of teaching recycling and not math or science in school nowadays.
@@Tengokuchi You are attributing to me a statement that I did not make. I merely commented on the lack of understanding about (if I am not misinterpreting Dak's comment) a simple matter of chemistry/science. As for your algae, reefs, and trees idea, I "guess" you are correct, but only in this regard: since algae have a short lifespan and trees have a long one (I assume your "reef" comment related to the non-living, stony structure for coral), the dead algae ITSELF will not retain the C. I would like to see some real scientific data, though, if you think this is a major point, since.... ...even after the algae die, I suspect LOTS of the carbon of their bodies is consumed by other microbial life, either shortly after death or on the ocean's floor. It seems to me then that the question of how much of the algae's original C remains sequestered is not a matter amenable to a simple answer.
6:06 Those stumps look like they're from second growth trees planted 40ish years ago, with the sole purpose of being logged in the future. Is the idea that you get rid of sustainable logging, which involves harvest and replanting? Pretty stupid imo . Edit: apparently yes, sustainable logging is apparently not sustainable according to these guys
I think it's a salvage cut in a burned area, look at all the snags and red deads in the background. Clear cuts arent very common on national forest land but are used in burns. Either way you're hitting the nail on the head, once again logging is unfairly painted as all bad.
Suzanne Simard gave an intriguing Ted Talk on how trees communicate. It's not just the trees that grow largest that are thriving, they share their water, and their nutrients with neighboring trees and saplings. Along with that resource sharing, comes an interesting form of "knowledge" that is passed on. Older trees have survived by withstanding floods, droughts, UV radiation, forest fires, diseases, and pests, and that information is not only stored in their rings, but is then passed on to younger trees. An entire library of "how to survive" manuals for trees could be lost if old growth forests are allowed to die out or be cut down. That resilience and the ability to store more carbon is something trees must learn over time by precedents that were set by generations before them.
Nice to see how a forest is viewed as an ongoing process instead of a static place. Observing how nature develops a stretch of open soil there's a rather specific order in which things start to grow. Grasses and herbs in the first year, as they start covering the soil in a protective layer of biological material. Then faster growing tree species and shrubs transcend this base layer. Willow, birch, hawthorn. The more biological material is added to the future forest floor, and the more shade is cast, the better its capacity to store moisture. A stable moisture content creates en environment in which a healthy microbal world and fungal network can grow. This network supports longer living species like oak and beech, forming a resilient community better able to cope with drought, pests and disease. Considering these observations I'm curious if the best way of "starting" a forest might not simply be putting baby trees into the ground but more so laying the foundations on which a future forest can build itself. To add, grasses, herbs, seeds and time.
How much carbon can an old growth forest can absorb? How much land must be set aside to make a difference? Is depending on tress to clean the atmosphere at this point equivalent to using an eye dropper to clean up an oil spill?
Republicans of Oregon refuse to sign cap-and-trade bills which would protect Oregonian forests from exploitation. Last time there was a vote, they walked out rather than regulate the logging process and timber market.
This is the same stupidity as banning mining in your local area but still allowing people to buy pots and pans. You simply export the mining elsewhere. Banning important natural resource extraction is asanine, unless you also have the balls to ban usage of finished materials as well. Otherwise you're literally just putting your own aesthetic concerns over people's real world needs for resources, by driving up prices.
@@flakgun153 natural resource extraction as you put it should not just be done Anywhere. And we can certainly reduce our consumption as we are filling landfills and oceans at an alarming rate. Its time we stop letting a few PROFIT HUGELY at the health/death detriment to ALL OF US. We as humans need to be the stewards of this planet
Ok i am gonna be honest here. I did NOT expect such a high quality video! You are amazing! The way you speak, the way you presented everything! Simply elegant. You just earned a subscriber! Bravo.
Seaweed and Sea Grass are 100x more capable of taking up carbon can any rainforest of the same space. Please do a video on this. Thank you. Beautiful host.
This video is extremely important to watch! In my opinion this should reach as many people as possible. But in order to do that I believe you need to take another look at your title. I saw it and almost didn't watch because it seemed a bit borning. No offence, I am saying this so you can maybe try and reach more people. :)
The thing that upsets me the most are these folks who don't reuse, or destroy "good lumber"!! And I see this all the time on Craig's List or other Classified Sections!! I am talking about the people who tear into "cutting up a deck" or "tearing down a shed" without considering how much good lumber they are sawing up into pieces too small to be reused for anything!!!! And I am not talking about cutting up a rotted board mind you....but the same guy (person) will saw up a bunch of 8 foot boards, just for the sake of sawing up wood, that could have been used for some other project!! And don't get me wrong I have thrown away scrap wood myself, it happens when a board to way too short to use!! BUT you can usually get a second life, out of an eight foot 2X4 just by sawing off two feet of it.....and there are people out there like myself, who wouldn't mind having an extra 2X4 or 4x4 post that is only six feet long!! Not only does this save on the number of trees you have to cut down to make new lumber, but a six foot post can still be used to mount a hand rail to a set of new deck stairs, or a railing on a newly built deck in a lot of cases! You can even use a six foot 2X4 or 2X6 as a part of a header over a door or window just by cutting it to what ever your needed dimension is required! BUT too often I see people saw up an 8 foot board into two foot sections without considering that "somebody somewhere might be able to use this", and even some deck boards can be reused as well, if they were "cut long" to allow them to be repurposed for some other usage!! A while back I was given a large shed build in 1971 and told "get rid of it"!! But upon looking at it, the main shed was not in bad shape, while the 8 foot by 8 foot front portion was bad!! Looking closer though, there were a lot of good 2x4s and 2x6s in the "bad front half", of the same shed.....so I carefully took it apart and retained the rear half of the structure!! In the end ultimately, I was able to build part of a deck, and make some repairs to the old shed half I kept with the "bad half" of the building I disassembled...AND it gave me enough spare pieces of wood to build a couple other small projects with it, like an outdoor storage bench I am using to this day!! I do have to admit that at the same time I had also been asked to "remove a deck" and some of that old deck ALSO became part of three other projects I made as well too.....all out of what most people would have simply "tossed in the trash"!! But the half of shed AND the old deck was totally free, which not only saved me a ton of money......but saved the environment because I didn't have to use another tree to remake something else out of wood that I already had!!
Thank you for this! This is new information to me and seems very important. It also calls into question cap & trade practices and the actual effective offsets that are being purchased as carbon credits. If organizations are planting trees and selling that service to companies as credits, who point to that activity as balancing out their typical fossil fuel emissions or even as justification for *increasing* their emissions, then we have a real problem on our hands. Those carbon credits are actually a *liability* that *increases* carbon footprint until they reach a maturity date of about 20 years. THEN they have value as offsets, but only if those trees actually survive that long in the first place.
Yep, in any management decision we really have to follow the science. Areas that are no longer forested but were generations ago could be planted for some benefit which is called afforestation. But if we're cutting old forest and replanting young forest, the science is pretty clear, thanks to Dr. Law's work. That is what we frequently see happening.
Alex Riddles In Bali, since 1989, I have inspired Balinese villagers & ecovillagers to plant over 200,000 food trees in their FAMILY COMPOUNDS. Thanks for the question. #asiflifeonearthmatters Many of the families, now
From the get-go, old growth forests are older than 150 years old by an order of magnitude. Second or third growth forests can have similar but very different forest composition and processes. Science reporters need to get their science correct!
Same questiom here - I don't get how growing even a single tree, harvesting it at a young stage and storing it's C-rich biomass as lumber is net positive🤔
@@იოსებხანუკაშვილი If I got your question correctly, what you are wondering is if it's going to turn into lumber, how it is net positive. If that is the case, the answer is, it is not. If you take pains to grow a tree and wait for 10-20 years, you leave it be. If you want lumber then, you use young trees. It will still not be net zero but that will not release that huge amount by cutting older trees. Would love to know if you have other interpretation.
@@neelroy2918 I don't get what role the age of the plant plays in the equation😳 To my understanding, even a young tree, harvested and used as furniture or construction material represents C taken from the air and stored in biomass - how can this process release more carbon then stored? I mean, respiration, be it of plants or microbial, oxidises the C that was fixed and not some fossil stuff like we do, and even if only a small part is used for building biomass - this small part makes the process already net-negative, doesn't it?
@@იოსებხანუკაშვილი releasing _more_ carbon than stored would violate first law of thermodynamics. So that's not a possibility:) - young trees would release more co2 than older trees for first 10-20 years. So whatever you do, it may as well tally. - the problem they proved is when you do that to older trees. Because they release less co2, because they are all grown up, if you use them instead then, planting ne trees would not being as much benefit. So, we need to leave old trees alone. Felling newer trees is better option because they have not reached to a place where c to o ratio is beneficial to us. Does that make sense?
This is north america forest. Tropical jungles can be a different story as tropical trees are more dense and lush, and therefore absorbs way more CO2 from the atmosphere. If we really want to halt climate change, as futile as that may sound, we need to stop cutting down trees. Period.
stop cutting old growth, for sure. could cut a lot of the understory in the US ponderossa forest, and improve the forest a great deal towards getting back to an old growth state.
I really appreciate Beth Law's Strategic Insights into Xlimate ACTION. Please let her know that my 1981 breakthrough in soil-related area expands her concept but for soils.
I'm not sure. I think the natural carbon cycle is still much larger than the fossil fuel carbon input. If not, the CO2 level wouldn't go down each summer. Of course, much of the natural cycle is oceanic, not forest. So your point is still probably true, but maybe not by orders of magnitude
@@chertfoot1500 I'll admit, I haven't looked into it close enough, but trees are only storing what they can hold until they die, and then the CO2 returns back into the atmosphere as they decay or burn up.
@@yaash4123 I did find a nice illustration just now. In gigatons/ yr: 39.9 = total emissions by people 12.5 = total absorption by land 9.2 = total absoprtion by ocean 18.7 = net addition to atmosphere
Fuel management and reduction decisions are a glaring omission here. Perhaps too deep of a rabbit hole? Fire management programs like fuel reduction could in the short term release carbon, but we've been losing a lot of those old growth (think California) carbon sinks lately to forest fires. I'd like to hear some math and measurements on how to balance this.
Fire in an old growth forest does not release much forest carbon. The above ground carbon in a post fire snag forest remains. There have been recent OSU detailed studies of post fire carbon quantity and I believe the numbers are around 90% of carbon remains post fire.
@@liwoszarchaeologist I agree, It is on first thought counter intuitive. But when I thought about it, after hearing about the research, it made sense. I'll note, on a recent field show-and-tell site visit in the Siuslaw NF, the district silviculturalist brought up fire as a threat to carbon sequestration. He said something like "see it all go up in flames." Not what in fact happens apparently.
@@chuckwiller1638 Depends on the intensity of the fire, right? You can't say fire does this or that in old growth without qualifying what type of fire you are talking about.
Horses for courses it depends on the forest, here in the tropical half of Australia it takes only 16 medium sized trees to offset one average household that not that much. And only one two to seasons of growth. Forestry is a solution if appropriate species and methods are used.
Also I’d like to see a study that took into consideration all of the carbon based life forms that reside in the forest and what fungi are doing as well.
That was a huge oversight. They used plantations as part of their study, with chemical fertilizers and that affects carbon sequestration. That will certainly skew results.
This was a bit counterintuitive but the profs explaining that Old Growth Forest sink of Carbon is greatest in the Forests that represent 3% of British Columbia Canada while in the USA it must be much lower than 1%. So to say from the onset that the Forests in the USA sink more carbon than the Amazon is patently false.
One other thing: does anybody know if anyone is studying the possibility of planting 30 to 60 trees per acre (probably five or more years old) and at the same time planting ground vegetation that will prevent other trees from establishing themselves? One of the reasons the fires in California have been so horrendous over the last four years is because we typically have 1,200 trees per acre. Most of those trees have DBHs of 8 inches or less - it's not much more than standing kindling. The problem with replanting the way it's done now is that we never have the follow up required. Replanting requires forest management that has not been practiced in the last 40 or so years. So, is it possible to plant in such a way as to avoid the forest management issues that will never be addressed? The ground veg selected would have to be incapable of dominating the land once the canopy closes above.
What you are asking for is simply called routine maintenance. Don't just plant and go, but maintain. This can be done manually with a lot of labor cost, or by controlled burning as was done by Native Americans. For maximum carbon storage, chip the waste and leave as a layer on the ground. 12" (30cm) of chips stores water well into summer.
@@markgrayson7514 Hi Mark, thanks for that. This of course would be extremely beneficial, but the funds keep getting cut for this type of management. Hopefully that will change. Just found some info on "accelerated forest succession." This is an attempt to revive eco systems and perhaps avoid some of the costs of future management. Just started looking into this, it may make for some good YT content. Cheers!
there are agroforestry research institutions testing everything. apparently there are no generalizable straight forward solutions yet. leaving a place alone for 20 years or sporadic but selective planting of local trees and bushes might do it. Grasses are doomed where water is not abundant.
Some interesting and valuable studies. I am concerned about her numbers concerning harvested forests. She makes an assumption that once harvested the carbon ends up back in the air in a fairly short period of time. This needs clarification and research. Wood products (eg. lumber) should have 40-100 years of direct use life. Perhaps most of this goes to a landfill which starts (not ends) the slow decay and re-introduction of the carbon. But into what? We know that grasses in the UK/Ireland make peat which is a long-term store of carbon. What does wood in the landfill make. I don't know and we should try to find out. I am also concerned about forest fires in these forests that we "leave alone". We are already seeing that this is not working in California. Some strategic lumber harvesting could make a huge difference in making the forests survive fires. One forest fire negates all of the carbon storage that we were counting on. The climate is complex and if we are going to try to "manage" carbon we need to do the research and accept that we don't know everything.
I fail to understand how young forests can be a carbon source, where is that "new" carbon coming from? They mentioned "the ground" but does the presence of young trees somehow affect this carbon release from the ground? If not then it's still benefitial to plant the trees
@@fuq1nutube If there is no forest planted there however, the soil will still respirate right? (even more likely, as zero shade from young trees), So the trees themselves are still sequestering carbon AND growing to protect that soil more... Right? Best way to do it I believe is with strong fast growing pioneer trees(and shrubs even) that will create canopies fast
@@woblobsterbeatboxer5124 That souds reasonable. Icould say for certain, this isn't something I have looked into. My previous response was based off info from the video.
Old trees are very different than new trees. Here on the east coast, all the old trees that had been growing for thousands of years, ALL cut down in less than 100 years. It literally makes me cry it is so sad
What about the Broad lead forests in the East? They are typicalyy more dense with Trees, and grow quicker than Pine Forests. The research would be interesting. With proper land management we can also increase the speed that a forest reaches "Old growth" status.
The old-growth Mountain Ash forests in southern Australia are the tallest flowering trees in the world (up to 100 metres) and they store an enormous amount of carbon, far more than juvenile saplings and young trees.
While this article is good. If old growth forests are left un touched they will catch fire and release carbon. Lumber has to be for long term products. Myowaki forests are net carbon sink and can be done easily with 1~2 acres of land.
Haha, riiiiight? Seems like we are - in some ways - always going to be relearning ecological concepts that challenge the story we believe about the world. In what class/major/department did you learn about forest carbon???
Thanks for the work in sharing scientific data we all need. I agree with FeatheryFool. We should be studing other climax communities like oak woodlands and perenial grass lands which I suspect fix carbon at a higher rate once they mature.
If it is mature forests, not mature trees that are good carbon sinks, surely a simple solution would be to ban clear-cutting of large areas, e.g. you cannot remove more than 10% of trees from a square mile of forest in a year, no removing the edges of a forest, and at least 80% of remaining trees must be 20+ years old, and you can only "clear cut" narrow strips maybe 30' wide, big enough to allow the heavy machinery through, but small enough that the forest canopy can quickly return, so you get a strip of young trees in a mature forest, do it right and you would likely not even need to replant, the forest would take care of that itself. As for 2 decades being too long to have an effect on Climate Change, in 1989 we were told if we did not fix climate change within a decade many coastal towns and cities, as well as many island nations, would be underwater by 2010, but we have seen single figure millimetres of sea-level rise in 32 years, not the 5-10 metres that were predicted, "climate scientists" and politicians overestimated the sea level rise by more than a thousand times, and every few years we keep getting those same estimates "fix things in the next decade or we are doomed", bearing in mind it has consistently been giving a highly pessimistic timescale, I suspect something that helps in 2-3 decades will help soon enough to mitigate a lot of what people are worried will happen in the next 5 years.
I keep seeing comments that are really missing the point. This video isn't saying you shouldn't plant trees or that planting trees is just as bad as other human activity. Its just an exercise in considering how we impact the environment. The biggest takeaways are that the environment is complex and there is no bandaid solution to climate change.
Correct, and there are also no band-aids big enough to cover the bullet wounds we continue to inflict on the planet.
Well the title of the video doesn't help.
@@CMZneu made you watch, didn’t it?
Yes
The video is very correctly points out that the "cut it we just gonna replant it anyway" and the "we can emit x gigaton as an industry if we plant y thousand trees there" type of mentality is not at all as enviromentally sustainbale as the beneficiaries of such industries would like you to belive.
As a forestry student, I feel like this does a good job at talking about carbon storage in mature forests. I am also happy that they tackled canopy closure. I would like to see them tackle a more finicky topic like restorative logging. For example, 100 years of fire suppression in the West has shifted the fire regimes. In other words, one of the determinants for fire severity. For areas where a fire should occur every 20 years and clear out the forest floor, 90 years without fire creates higher tree density than is natural for the area. To correct this, the Forest Service (among other agencies) write a prescription for loggers to follow. To be more clear, they are not clear cutting. They are selectively removing trees without creating openings in the canopy. Furthermore, where there are clearcutting (at least for Montana) the Forest Service prescribes it to areas of forest that have become susceptible to disease and thus become more fire prone. There is a lot of complexity to this topic and one that I am eager to be more involved in for the future. I believe that we can have logging benefit our forests while also combating large scale, high severity fires brought on by climate change. I don't see logging as inherently evil or anti nature. I see it as a tool and like all tools, it can be misused and when it is, calamity is the result, such as the clearcutting of healthy mature forests in the Pacific Northwest.
Could humans artificially close the canopy?
I live in N Idaho in an area that has just had a logging project come through. On the hillside, seed trees of mainly white pine and tamarack were left and every strong wind that comes through takes more of them down because they are used to growing close together. Down lower, there is still a canopy growing closer together without the same wind damage. How much CO2 gets burned up in slash piles and would it not be better to chip it or make Huegel culture?
@@slotho122 Trees starting in shade grow very slowly. You want light to get to them to grow. The ideal would be to thin to 12 to 15 foot apart and then let the existing trees fill in.
How about if they tackle weather and climate engineering, that would be good.
Leave nature alone.
This young woman does a great job explaining these complex issues. Her voice is soothing which makes her a joy to listen to. Thanks for this series.
I'm saddened you didn't mention the fact the Loss of Forest EcoSystems cannot simply be revived by planting endless rows of the same type of tree #MonoCulture
we could, e.g., run into the same problem that the Cavendish Banana is having, vs. a Healthy Forest EcoSystem.
That is true. However, these high latitude forests usually have a very low tree diversity anyway. Huge areas of two or tree arboreal species.
Then how big is your polyculture orchard.
If not big enough, plant using our Climate ACTION.
@@joshuachristofferson9227 one million percent truth. This is what I see in Oregon. I call them "dead forests" there are no birds in the monocrop forests and they are not right feeling.
Not to mention most of the time they plant male trees only.... go into any old growth forest and you see a plethora of typed of trees and they all work in biomimicry with one another through interaction with mycelium. You don't find the same type of mushrooms in the "fake forests" that you do in the old growth.
It’s not just about carbon. Trees regulate the climate, raise the water tables for more fresh drinking water and lower the sea level in the process. It’s always hotter without trees.
exactly, bare soil is the enemy.
They give us humans the 02 that we need to survive in this world !
They’re not saying trees are bad, but without this knowledge you may cut the newly grown trees too early. Which ruins the whole point of having the tree be a carbon sink.
@@neurophilosophers994 The carbon will make a lot of trees and forests and ecosystems.
So during the Jurassic period which was some 8 degrees hotter than today, no polar ice caps and tropical forests on both poles, the trees kept it cooler?
I think there needs to be more information made about natural grasslands as well
Also our oceans' forests and grasslands
And about bogs and the tundra which can store massive amounts of CO2.
@@Ninjaananas they are burning vast amounts of peat bogs in south America of all places! a lot burned to grow sugar. when burned the bogs release up to 1000 + years of stored carbon
Yes! Grasslands actually store MORE carbon than forests do, both in absolute and relative quantity, yet somehow they are never even mentioned as carbon sinks. Grasslands are also among the most biodiverse ecosystems on the planet, and for example in Europe so called semi-natural grasslands easily surpass old growth forests in terms of both species density and quantity. If we cover them with forests we lose potential or active carbon sinks, and a lot of biodiversity. But in the end wood is profitable, I guess that's why everybody is talking about forests.
@@htopherollem649
I thought that was in Oceania and Southeast Asia for palm plantations.
As a scientist, this was fascinating and raises many questions. It is worthy of a longer series to explain in further detail.
Yes! Totally agreed.
I ain’t a scientist, but I think it would be interesting to see all of the 154 national forests and how each of them stack up, and how much carbon each stores.
I live in Arkansas, and we have two national forests. The Ouachita and the Ozark-St Francis, so it’d be cool to see how much carbon they hold. I know the Ozark-St Francis won’t hold that much, considering that it only encompasses a few chunks of the Ozarks and the Boston mountains. I wish it was more like the Ouachita National Forest is a large chunk of the Ouachita Mountains. Though that could be because of all the Quartz. Lol
@@tuckeriacobacci Bev has done some of that and has a paper coming out soon in Nature about it. It's still unpublished but stay tuned!
I agree.
Several years ago I watched a documentary about Pleistocene Park in Siberia.
There is a Russian scientist named Sergey Zimov that proved that trees growing in the north of Siberia also contribute to climate change.
First I was in disbelief but he made some excellent points and could prove it.
Because the trees are darker than snow they take up a little more heat of the sun. This heat is than transfered by the roots to the underground.
This than causes the permafrost to melt a lot faster during the summer.
Melting of permafrost releases methane and other gasses that contribute to global warming.
Thousands of years ago Siberia was not full of trees but they where huge steppes with grazing animals.
But those animals died of (probably by human overhunting) and this gave room for the trees to grow and the rest you can guess.
Agreed. Very interesting but left me wanting to know more. For example, if new forests are net carbon sources for the first twenty years, how does that compare to adjacent treeless areas where trees aren't planted? Are the planted areas at least smaller sources in the short term than areas left unplanted?
you may also want to look at Menominee forestry practices, lumber can be harvested while making the forest healthier if you don't just clear cut.
Funickfy, they are re building the Wester Flyer, Steinbecks trawler he used in the 60's.. They are buying mature white oak from a Menominee forest in Kentucky.. they use horse teams and they don't rip up the undergrowth when pulling selected logs out..
Very cool seeing how little they destroy the surrounding fauna when hauling tons of wood, maybe our ancestors were on to something.. even the manure had a net positive effect..
Norway ,Sweden and Denmark have the best control over their forest practices
@@planegaper wow cool! Steinbeck's "Log from the Sea of Cortez" is my favorite of his books. Nonfiction. I don't recal if that's the boat he used though.
@@chertfoot1500 It is in deed , Western Flyer was the boat, they are re building her to new through a boat building school in Washington.. here's the link
ruclips.net/channel/UCXIlPuc45MBAHorIYCft-WQ all done in white oak, and purple heart.. considering it's lineage that boat will be worth unseen money..
@@planegaper That comment about the manure is BS!!! LOL.
There should be a difference between the types of forests we're talking about here, and not just in terms of age. Is a young tropical forest different? A mangrove? A bamboo forest?
Should we plant rapidly growing big plants instead of temperate forests instead, for short term significant gains?
What about grasslands? Is the Pleistocene Park onto something?
Yes
hahaha you thought the tree planting contracts were made out of altruism ? ..it's a long term investment for politicians, that can rake in millions in lumber revenue in 30 or so years.. Otherwise they'd be planting different species..
Please go and bid on a tree planting contract in B.C...or any other big "green' project.
See how fast the door gets shut in your face.. ask to see the bidding process, and you might get thrown in jail for trespassing..
@@SungazerDNB i think bamboo is the best due to its robust nature
how about making terra preta type charcoal soil?
They obviously didn't have time to cover everything. They did say that the forests of the Pacific Northwest are the MOST kick-ass carbon-wise and should be strategically preserved. I think: "how?" next, is maybe the most important thought. We need alternate building materials to all that Northwest Timber. Certainly Bamboo, but also Cannabis/Hemp for insulation and structure are part of that. Mud/cement brick type things. Did you know that Aircrete, a fantastic insulating version of concrete used world wide, is more or less illegal in California because it "needs to be tested for earthquake safety" even though it has earthquake safe versions with good track records already used in places like Japan and Brasil that also have earthquakes. It's almost worst than Newpaper guy Hearst helping make cannabis illegal so they would use his trees for paper instead. Similar, anyway.
I live in Ontario and I cut my forest constantly. Mainly just the dead wood but living trees too sometimes. I totaly agree about keeping the canopy closed and never ever clear cutting. Selective cutting is the way to go. That is the best way to produce the most wood per acre for sure. Thinning in winter also feeds the deer and keeps their populations up, it works for rabbits too. Burning dead wood is essential in my view to reduce the risk of forest fires. My favourite fires are for heating my home and water as well as making that sweet sweet maple syrup!
All the crap to shoehorning the use of wood for burning...please MIGRATE TO INHABITABLE CLIMATE and the sun will cook your food
The video's title is misleading because the question is not satisfactorily answered. Data is data, but there is no explanation for the mechanisms behind observed differences. I suspect it's a matter of volumes. Old growth forest has a greater volume for carbon-capturing processes (plus stored carbon) compared to the volume of the adjacent soil that is respiring (devouring fallen carbon). New growth has a small volume compared to adjacent soil. To understand the principle, consider how much more food a large adult needs to maintain "volume" when compared to a small child. The salient question, then, is how to optimize photosynthetic carbon capture AND how to restore the enormous amount of carbon that has been lost from soils globally.
Once a forest has a canopy, it pulls more carbon. Trees + canopy + soil = high biodiversity = carbon sink. She doesn't get into detail about the canopy, but canopies can offer extensive biodiversity. The canopy also helps the soil maintain moisture. Moist soil increases the bio diversity in the soil.
Trees - soil = low biodiversity = carbon producer. If a forest doesn't have a canopy (tree tops that touch), the carbon release mechanisms in the soil beat what's the carbon sink mechanisms of the trees.
Not all the info is in this standalone episode, but knowing about canopies & moist soil made it very clear to me.
@@richardmanuel3072 Then, what they referred to as a "dry forest" is not merely a matter of climatic zone, but of shading/exposure of the soil? Shading, if I understand you correctly, helps to maintain soil moisture and to reduce carbon loss from the soil.
This is what I was thinking would also play a part on total carbon sequestration of trees. But I would suspect surface area over volume since the inside of a tree is deadwood. It's only the outer layers that are actively processing carbon, with the bark being most active.
@@richardmanuel3072 I'm pretty sure that the researchers said they examined different densities of new growth. Are talking about the forest or the trees? Individually, it would make sense that a tree has to reach a certain size before it has a net negative carbon footprint. And that would be independent of the surrounding trees. It would also make sense that the sum of the trees would be greater than individual trees. That they would increase the carbon sequestration as they combine efforts.
@@briand8090 True, but the total area (volume actually) of active tissue and leaves is greater in higher volume trees -- taller, greater circumference, larger crown, larger roots. It's a while since I did botany, but I thought that photosynthesis occurs in the leaves and that phloem, xylem, and cambium, not protective bark, are responsible for transporting water and nutrients, and for providing cells for growth.
Does Planting Trees Actually Hurt The Climate?
No, it does not hurt the climate.
But, to get the full benefit, the soil must be wet & ideally the tops touch (a canopy). From planting, that takes 20 years.
Although, clearcutting old growth and then planting may hurt.
@@chertfoot1500 I don't think they do much CC anymore, at least not like in the bad ole days.
@@dangoerke51 yeah the industry has changed a lot, partly because the old growth is mostly gone in the US
@@chertfoot1500 I was not referring to CCing old growth, but rather to CCing in general. While I believe they still cut large parcels, it is more like in a checkerboard pattern, to reduce the problems of regrowth (lots of new trees coming naturally from more mature trees on the perimeter), soil erosion (soils are caught by surrounding forested areas, habitat disruption, etc.
The idea now (I think) is that if you need to cut 100 acres of trees, do it in 10 acre small parcels, not a 100-acre parcel that become VERY problematic. You get the same amount of lumber and costs will be slightly higher, but you don't have anywhere near the same environmental impact.
Not sure about all this. If I am wrong, someone please let me know. (But know that if you do respond without references, I will likely Google to find out REAL information. Thus, most "Twitter meme" responses will be ignored.
Ok but how does it compare to the amounts given off by the respiration of the soil without any trees? There's only half of the picture depicted here, and the trees themselves aren't giving off the carbon. It's clear the older the forest is, the more carbon it stores per unit time, but that's all that is really answered here.
Exactly, you hit the nail on the head.
This video is moronic click bait.
I think it's a matter of volumes. Old growth forest has a greater volume for carbon-capturing processes (plus stored carbon) compared to the volume of the adjacent soil that is respiring (devouring fallen carbon). New growth has a small volume compared to adjacent soil.
@@compassroses the carbon released by the soil is carbon that's been stored there by the forest that's been cut, not the young seedlings. Trees, however young, will be a net carbon sink as long as they're alive and healthy.
I believe their point is to show that preserving old forests is much more important than planting new ones right now. I don't think they intended to picture planting trees as a bad thing.
(Ok, the title is a bit clickbaity...)
@@nisnber5760 It’s not click bait and it’s not moronic. It needs more science done to it. Conservatives always look for the easy way out. And they’re always stuck on the “Lost Cause”.
Yes! Your intro brought a tear to my eye. Trees have been here for us all along, and we just keep cutting down forrest lands, paying no attention to the effects it's having on our own well being, the planet, and everything else. The trees have great power in this world, as do the mycelium. 🌱🍄
Perhaps a bit more explanation on the source of this carbon imbalance is due: microbial respiration in young, open forests releases carbon already in the soil, presumably from earlier generations of trees. Mature forests store more carbon that they release in their soil, making its organic content greater every year. Forest is not trees only.
I'm so confused by all that. How can a forest accumulate carbon indefinitely without the fossilisation processes that used to occur at the carboniferous era? Shouldn't the biomass of a forest be limited, among other things, by the available solar power which is, on average, a constant? Wouldn't it lead to some kind of asymptotic growth? Isn't the biomass of a twenty years old forest greater than a zero years old forest? If that is the case, how could the forest be releasing carbon all this time? Where did the carbon come from during these initial 20 years?
@@marcoskunrath5914 This was indeed not a very clear video.
As far as I understand, the "carbon positive" young forest is that of the producers' homeland, the USA, where clear-cutting old forest is a common practice. Then net-positive carbon emission comes from microbial respiration in organic material accumulated on the former forest floor by trees now gone (their dead leaves etc). It takes time for newly planted saplings to start growing fast enough that their carbon accumulation outpaces this respiration.
Solar power limits the total rate of photosynthesis, that is, accumulation of organic carbon. Initially most of it is in live biomass, but with time more and more of it accumulates in soil from various kinds of tree detritus.
That said, there are environments (e.g. Amazon forest) where growth is limited by inorganic nutrients in very poor soil. Those forests are more or less closed circle.
Look up "Soil carbon sequestration" - there are various ways to increase the content of organic carbon in soil, making it both more productive and turning it into a carbon sink. But, as all similar measures, its effectiveness if the big picture of climate change is limited: the only real long term solution id drastically limiting emission. We do have the technology to do that in all sectors: transport, energy production, manufacture of steel and cement, agriculture. What is missing is the will of entrenched financial interests to relinquish their position.
@@bazoo513 I just read some of Dr. Law’s and others papers and they are much clearer than the video. I think I get her point now. Forests take much much longer to reach equilibrium than we previously thought.
Thanks for the heads up on Soil carbon sequestration. That hasn't crossed my mind.
@@bazoo513 Thanks for the explanation of the carbon flows!
In the USA today it is unusual to cut old growth forest, since we already cut most of it. Remaining old growth is often protected, or in hard to reach places.
In my area of New Mexico much of the forest was cut in the late 1800s when the railroad came through.
@@bazoo513 we all use a huge amount of carbon based energy. blaming producers is like a city person blaming a farmer because he uses more energy to make a living. i am quite sure the big energy users switch to more effiecent systems when it pays to do it. after all it affects their bottom line much more than a office .
To get an old tree you need to start with a young tree ... so ... the sooner you plant the tree the better.
Of course, but the most important takeaway any of us should have is to STOP CUTTING DOWN OUR FORESTS. Leave the old growth ones alone, especially, and.instead grow newer forests to cut down if truly necessary.
“The best time to plant a tree was 20 years ago, the second best time is now”
@@Zaihanisme exactly
I want to give Kudos to this. I have been saying this since the 1980's. This is the first document I have seen that even mentions the forest let alone give any numbers about it.
Did you run, The Late Show with David Letterman band, and also others?
Good to know, that you have been giving voice to this. The trees need spokespersons. Trees tend to be all bark, and no bite.
finally a video about how old trees are not necessarily bad, but very beneficial to have around.
So basically try to close the canopy sooner. Then they grow vertically and store more carbon. I would like to also have some data from sustainable forests, where they cut only the dead trees and thin out just enough so neighbor trees don't die.
That, actually, is the best approach, if the wood harvested is used in a way that does not return the carbon in the atmosphere (e.g. as building material).
That also aids in a bigger and faster traffeling forrest fire once they catch on fire. There is a good medium.
How about we just copy a healthy older Forrest?
@@CHMichael My post has the intention to find a way to replicate the results faster than the natural development of an area to an old forest, that may take decades to happen. Anyway, I don't mean row thinning, just removing one tree when two or more are too close together and they are starting to show signs of hindered growth.
Stop cutting down trees... use alternative building methods...
@@user-rb7ns9yj5y Actually, if you cut trees for timber and use the rest for paper or something, and cut only mature trees near the end of their life, you sequester their carbon for centuries and leave room for young trees to soak up some more from the atmosphere. But clear-cutting and leaving most of the biomass to rot is the worst.
Cement, brick and steel production are all very energy intensive. Cement, in addition, release more CO2 during production. However, for all three there are new low-carbon technologies, especially if using clean energy (renewables or nuclear).
I have been saying for years that Arbor Day should be one of our most important holidays. Early settlers come to the East Coast and defoliate to build homes, Then, down the road Oklahoma becomes a dust bowl. By chance? Not likely.
You think Oklahoma had vast forests that were cut down? Places like Scotland are missing forests. Central mexico
Oklahoma and the Midwest area in general turned into a dustbowl because the mega herds of bison were all killed off. It is explained really well in A Sand County Almanac by Aldo Leopold, particularly the section called The Land Ethic
Fun fact: plastic is 80% carbon, and is virtually indestructible. Therefore, the great Pacific plastic patch is a huge carbon sink.
The only problem is that this carbon came directly from oil, not from the atmosphere :o(
Can fracking, mining, oil spills and endless war actually hurt the planet?
Have you ever fracked? Did you know that old mining sites are being re-established by lavender crops?
At the scale these things are now occurring, we already know the answer is yes.
Mass extinction and the end of mammals will open many opportunities for life to evolve into. Humans are a temporary problem. Life will go on without us.
Yes, they hurt the surface, the water, the atmosphere and sometimes have effects below ground. In southwestern Pennsylvania where I live the fracking is fairly intense. Just this past year an old natural gas well was repurposed as fracking waste water injection well. It is on a hilltop about a mile from us and is near a stream that joins the Allegheny River. The intake for our municipal water plant is a short distance downstream, When an accident inevitably happens it will be a real mess. Pittsburgh also gets its water from the river downstream. Just my two-cents but this doesn’t have to be this way. Renewable energy is mostly pollution free including all kinds of greenhouse gases.
@@Sara-bb2qg "Net zero for many windmills is at least 20 year of use."
Eh, modern wind turbines take around 6 months to become net zero. Of course the answer depends on where you are and what is being replaced, but 20 years is way off. Another way of looking at it is the GHG intensity of wind electricity. This is generally between 10-50 g CO2 per kWh (you can check NREL if you are looking for a source on this). It's an order of magnitude lower than electricity from natural gas (the cleanest fossil fuel).
The mining effort required is significant, and there will definitely be supply chain problems. But what is the alternative? Just burning fossil stuff and pretend the effects are manageable?
Cutting down old growth Forrest is bad. Wow, who would of thought that?🤔
It is still happening in many parts of the world where "economic development" is still needed for the sake of GDP.Brazil,Indonesia,Chile...
@@botany3212 climate people also do not like Climax forests
The video's credits say "Original Production Funding Provided by Oregon Community Foundation".
Doesn't exactly scream neutrality, does it?
I wish more *science* went into this video. Like for example, is there any feasible way to reduce the microbial respiration rate, to reduce its carbon sourcing.
Is there a way to manage the "gaps" in the new forest to make it be a carbon sink sooner?
And perhaps I missed it, but when the new forest is a net source, by about 20%, what percent as a *sink* does it become when it's a few decades old? Also 20%? More?
I think a lot was missed here, except the singular, triple-reinforced idea of _don't touch that old forest !_
After doing a little research about new growth, it appears (I am not a "tree scientist") that the current thinking is that new growth IS a carbon sink. Like almost any issue related to CC, it's complicated and this video seems to imply that the research is done only in a small area in the PNW. And what's wrong with cutting and releasing the C over a period of 30 years? Seems like a rather long time to me. I also wrote a comment above asking if the creation of new soil, forest litter, etc. does not also sink carbon in the little critters and bacteria that grow and feed on this stuff. BTW, just because something is funded by "something" does not mean it CANNOT be objective or add to the body of knowledge. You just need to keep in mind that today, most "science" is backing one agenda or another. Einstein, Heisenberg, and the Curies would be appalled, but what can you do?
@@dangoerke51 Releasing C over 30 years is still putting it into the atmosphere. There is some work in sequestration by increasing the organic fraction of soil. Not an expert on this. What I’ve seen suggests that it has a potentially big capacity (tons per acre) but longevity is unknown, just like the forests. Natural systems have evolved to cycle carbon, so it shouldn’t be surprising that there aren’t a lot of long term sinks out there.
Why u guys measuring in a desert setting with no groundcover and not a temperate setting? This is really incomplete research and a click bait title
They said that people tried it all over the world in different settings. DId you watch the video?
@@chertfoot1500 do u see the landscape of the study they’re directly referencing?
@@J-berg They show one site, and say many sites have been studied. Is that incomplete, in some bad way? Science is always incomplete, we don't know everything.
The title is kinda clickbait though.
They should put more links in the description, but they put this one in a comment, and it covers your objection, perhaps:
"Ecosystem carbon dioxide fluxes after disturbance in forests of North America" Amiro et al 2010
In Germany there existed once a Woodcutting Method called Haubergswirtschaft where the Forest was partitioned into 20 to 32 Areas and every Year one part of the Forest would be cut in Winter when most of the Trees Energy is in its Roots.
Also they would be cut in an Angle so that Rain could flow down the Stumps and it wouldn't rot, also the Branches and 'useless' Wood would be burned carefully around the Stumps without hurting the Roots to bring back Carbon and and Nutrients into the Soil.
Afterwards the part of the Forest would be protected against wild Animals that would eat the new Shoots and the Forest would be left alone for 20 to 32 Years to regenerate from the Shoots In that Time it would only be allowed to collect Mushrooms in that Area and let small Animals roam like Chicken after a few Years where they can't eat the Shoots anymore.
Maybe then the Forest would capture more Carbon faster, because it doesn't has to start from the beginning.
Yet when I had been there the Trees there had been pretty chaotic and quirky because they were mostly used for Firewood and to be turned into Coal, but also for Construction: Beeches for Coal and they were growing in all Directions and Oaks for Construction that grew more normally.
Interesting, I wonder what the growing conditions are? There are some very long rotation harvest experiments in Oregon that do store lots of carbon for generations but still yield significant harvest.
Thanks, very interesting local methods!
I love that this series is filmed mostly in Oregon and Washington! It’s so cool to see my little corner of the world used as examples of what it takes to have healthy and productive forests!
Yeah, but the notion that timber harvest is going to stop in the PNW anytime soon defies the pushback that would happen. The best way to stop tree harvest is consumer driven purchases like bamboo and hemp alternatives for paper. Alternative building materials need to be developed to attain the structural integrity of tree wood. I hope we can advance in that area. Would be a boon to agriculture, too.
It used to be cool in Federal Way Washington, until a lot of the trees were cut down. Now I get to see it happen to Wilmington NC
The crazy thing is, I was taught this in highschool back in the early 90's and they still haven't gotten the message across.
Greed
How many trees have you planted?
@@caesars7hills892 lots
@@caesars7hills892 Your comment is not relevant to the original post or very friendly. Why did you comment? Are you against environmental education? Do you believe those who want environmental education should also actively provide environmental remediation in the areas they teach about?
Should someone who wants more education about fisheries management *also* be required to maintain quotas and enforce bycatch laws? OR ARE YOU JUST A TROLL?
& here we are 30 years later & it still hasn’t happened all the horror stories the media spread about global warming is complete garbage!
Here in germany i am not aware of the practise of "clear cuts" besides when some storm or insect investation made us cut certain areas down to prevent spread or just to make reforestation easier. What is done here is a Förster(dude responsible for the wellbeing of the woods and animal life within) goes through the woods and marks now and then certain trees for being cut down. The categories he uses for that again are these trees healthy, do they take away growth areas from younger trees and many more of which i myself as layman am not aware of. Point being, besides maybe economic effciency, i don't see a reason for clear cuts.
Additional to that mono cultures which was seen especially economicly profitable, are now more and more a thing of the past. Softwood and broadleaf are mixed together for a more robust, stable and healthy symbiotic environment. One challange though now due to temperatures rising is which new types of trees we may want to settle, as some of the original types have more and more problems. I feel this as especially hurtfull to many of us as we dont want our original native trees to go away as i see it they are pretty much part of us and our culture, but sadly we don't have much of a choice either. If we don't adept things would get worse.
Now not everything is shiny here in germany where it comes to our forrests either. Politicians much too often turn a blind eye to when quotas are crossed and more trees are cut down than agreed upon. The economic needs seem many times to dictate policy. This is something with the new government i hope we could get a grip on.
Clear cut is for economuc efficiency. If you take only a few trees from forest, you spend as much work hours with small machines and human labours as clear cuttin and collecting all trees with big machines.
@@juhajuntunen7866 I guessed as much, what i am but more interested in is if that practise is environmentaly less or more beneficial. If we can put in some more work, have therefor jobs in that sector, but also the benefits of an on avverage older forrest as described here in this vid. Shouldn't we try to do it that way then? It is said nearly 50% of all jobs will fall away in the next 20 to 30 years due to the impact of AI systems, this could be one way to gain some jobs again and have a positive impact on climate change.
@@kinngrimm Wjere I live in Canada, clear cutting happens quite a bit. They do plant trees where they cut, but it is typically just the preferred species that is planted. It's a very weird feeling when you drive past a section of forest that has been there your entire life only to find an empty field.
@@Briggsian from steroetypes out of american movies the canadian is often painted as the wood cutter with the typical flanell shirts :) Is there any truth to that? Another more important question though, what about erosion? Aren't areas which are clear cut especially endangered to erosion if not even complet mount sides being washed away? While there are the longtermclimate change relatevant impacts, i guess in comparison rather short term negativ environmental impacts still could be relevant too, right?
@@kinngrimm In my areas, it's not so much erosion that's the concern from clear cutting, it's flooding. Trees help to keep snow and ice from melting too quickly when there is a thaw during the spring. When areas are clear cut, all that frozen water melts and can quickly overflow waterways which is a big problem in a province where the majority of people live along rivers. Hydroelectric dams can control the flow to an extent, but at a certain point it just gets out of hand.
While everyone keeps hyper focusing on trees the Great plains which is one of the biggest carbon sinks in the world is being taken over by pavement at a alarming rate matter in fact its only 1/8 of what it used to be size was if you look at old 1800s maps it stretched from Missouri to the rocky mountains and even in the flat land passes in the mountains it was for a good distance on the western side of the rocky mountains.
Great plains?
Ironic because in fact the area described was a grassland the forest I belive stoped around the 100 longitude line. When the grasses were over grazed and fires controlled much became brush covered the great forest pre-Columbian did not cover the great plains because fires burnt back the brush and huge Buffalo herds trampled brush and fertilized grassland see mr savory's video on holistic range management
@@Geo.StoryMaps ?
Suggestion:
1) Grow denser in one area
2) Once reaches saturation, cut half of them to make room for further growth
3) Continue trimming until forrest matures
If the difference between matured and young forrest is 1) the density of canopy, 2) the coverage is the cost of higher oxygen intake, and 3) land space is a contrain, we should make more effective use of land.
Hemp can replace 90% of all wood needs and has better results in every category for the win too.
In Brazil it' being done and we call it "Forest Management" It's a similar concept but numbers came from development-based equations for each single area/species
Just what I was thinking :)
Also, plant undergrowth and ground cover so soil doesn't sit bare in between trees
This is why in a permaculture design we focus upon the under story and nursery trees. Must plant poly culture because what we need is mature plantings. For trees it's a decade, but many perennials reach maturity in a few years. Then you have annuals. Add in rotational grazing in into that forest, you will be sequestering carbon inside the year.
Regenerative agriculture works.
I got muted in an environment-focused FB group for pointing out that planting new trees isn’t the solution to removing carbon from the atmosphere that will fix everything for us. 🙄
There is no one solution, so just because something doesn't entirely fix everything doesn't mean it's not worthwhile.
It goes against dogma. Plus, pro-logging individuals always try to infiltrate those groups. They want to put the responsibility back on us, instead of us seeking out logging bans. A little manipulation helps them to avoid hurtles to contracts to logging contracts.
It goes against dogma. Plus, pro-logging individuals always try to infiltrate those groups. They want to put the responsibility back on us, instead of us seeking out logging bans. A little manipulation helps them to avoid hurtles to logging contracts.
@@rustyschackleford5800 That was literally my point, they were mocking the idea that we might want to pursue other methods of removing carbon from the atmosphere in addition to planting trees.
Boycott Facebook
a old large tree that produces lots of leaves and is “50%” carbon, holds and stores more carbon……who woulda thunk
and it's funny they talk only about pines, but what about more efficient C4 species like bamboo, or trees like Paulownia sp.?
@@იოსებხანუკაშვილი I didn't know Paulonia is c4! Have a couple for shade
When I am flying over southwest Arkansas, you can see where the woods were replanted by the patterns of the trees. There are no gaps and they have done an amazing job or repopulating the forests. It’s done in small sections and appears a lot of care goes into managing it all
Trees are the kindest things I know
They do no harm they simply grow
They give us shade from leaves above
And in return all they want is Love
💕🌲💕🌲💕🌲💕🌲💕🌲💕🌲
When you were filming the first part of the video I was thinking, "I bet she is in eastern Oregon", and I am glad I was spot on :D Hopefully you had fun visiting my neck of the woods (pardon the pun, sorry/not sorry). I'm further south than where you were (Ashland), but Oregon is a gorgeous place all over. Cheers! :)
Hi! Lots of the production crew if Weathered is from Oregon. We live in Portland and spend most of our time on the rainy west side but loooooove to visit the dry eat side.
Yea i was guessing eastern OR/WA as well, i have lived up and down the PNW.
How's life there? Huge antifa infestation there, I hear.
@@utuberme1 do you know what antifa means?
@@utuberme1 How to say you're a Fascist without saying you're a Fascist.
The question left unanswered is what to do with young growth forests, particularly those whose mycorhizal communities have been disrupted by previous agricultural use. Is there a better use for that land, from the perspective of trying to inhibit climate disruption? Also, a recent experiment reported in peer reviewed from northern India which followed a long term tree planting project showed that most of the planted trees died, and, in any case, the planting did not affect the composition of the forest to any significant degree.
They Skip over a vital question: how does young growth compare to no growth. Cause sure young growth VS the ground is negative. But is no growth VS the ground even more negative? If so then even young growth has its use in reducing carbon emissions.
This video has an agenda. Old forest have to be stagnant. This video makes no sense.
The question wasn't so much skipped over as briefly touched on. They mention that the young growth forests respire about 80% of the carbon back into the air, meaning there is a slight reduction in carbon output from the land, but the young growth forest is nevertheless a carbon source. She also says "There's nothing wrong with young forests." and that they're a long-term valuable tool to efficiently reducing carbon, but I think the point from this video is that we need to rethink the conventional "wisdom" that it's okay to clear cut older forests because we can just replace them with what we thought were efficient carbon capturing young forests.
I’m really glad the planting of forest is starting to be discussed as a climate solution. But it’s also important to remember that planting the right species is as important as planting trees. Many of these forests shown are monocultures. They look to be all the same genus, and probably the same species.
We need to remember the earlier stages of succession will shelter young trees, and allow the trees to grow in better. And for Pete sake, in dry climates, please start composting the wood (on site) which starts these wildfires.
"On dry climates, please start composting..." How do we do that? Any source of info you can recommend?
There is no way to widely compost wood in a large dense forest. Any effort to put out any (naturally occuring) forest fires makes forests more dense then they would otherwise naturally be if left to burn normally. It's quite a difficult problem to solve. We'd basically need massive acres of rotating, regular, calibrated controlled burns in order to fix the forest overdensity problem. Doable but not easy, and not great for air quality
@@weareallbornmad410 a few channels I’d recommend are: Shamus O’Leary, Geoff Lawton- Greening the desert, California gardening/ next level gardening or whatever his channel is called now, and Andrew Millison- India’s Water Revolution.
@@oakinwol true, but a lot of people have “woods” at the back of their yard. That’s a good point about rotation burning. It’s a much better solution than what’s going on in arid climates now…
Every tree and plant plays a role in the ecosystem. Planting them in a way they can all work together is the problem we need to focus on.
Maiya May and Caitlin Saks are my two favorite science hosts.
Mine too! Totally agree.
There are a thousand reasons why planting more trees and protecting forests is a good idea. Helping to reduce the carbon in the atmosphere is not one of them. You would need an area about 2.5x the size of the Earth to offset human emissions.
Preserving existing old growth saves a lot of carbon. It's a big deal. It's not like a drop in the bucket, more like a cup in the bucket.
There is a "Climax Forest" on the Chehalis River in Washington State !
A true old forest where the brushy undergrowth is shaded out .
What's the area called? We're from Portland and always looking for good old growth to see.
@@ElementalWildfire sorry I don't remember what it is called . But it is on the North Bank of the river .
Wow Maiya is just too beautiful. It’s incredible.
This seems like a very selective idea of what 'young forest' is. I know from experience that commercial plantations are over-planted and close the canopy within a few years after which they are progressively thinned out. By the same token forests that are planted to capture and sequester carbon would be managed accordingly.
This is a great point and one that is extremely briefly mentioned in the film... I wish we had time to go deeper! Bev has done similar work in plantations and found about the same numbers. Although they are densely planted, there's still a lot more soil respiration than sequestration by the forest. Some fast growing forests like on the west side of Oregon can become carbon sinks in less than 20 years but globally, she told us that 10-20 years is just how long it takes. Interestingly, plantations and private forests managed for timber production or carbon sequestration do a better job of sequestering carbon with longer rotations. She found that a 90-year rotation rather than a 40 to 60-year rotation could yield similar production but sequester way more carbon.
@@ElementalWildfire Thanks for your reply. I own some farmland in New Zealand which has recently yielded around 900 tonnes per hectare of radiata pine after a 25 year rotation which will give you some idea of the *gross* carbon uptake. However you may be interested to know that I haven't replanted pines and I'm actively returning the land to native forest on a permanent basis.
Wow, that's very interesting. What made you decide to make the change? And will you still harvest wood from the native forest in the future? There are some very cool selective harvest 'ecoforestry' operating in Oregon when I live that do get significant yield with very long rotations. Often longer than a human lifetime for certain trees.
@@ElementalWildfire Thanks for your interest; The radiata pine had been planted on marginal (steep and eroded) pasture adjacent to small patches of native 'bush' and fairly soon after I acquired the young plantation I decided that once the pines were mature and harvested I'd encourage the native plants to re-establish themselves. The interesting thing is, until they close the canopy and out-compete the natives, the pines are actually quite good primary cover provided you actively thin them out. The reason why I'm doing this is because like you, I love nature in its natural balanced state and this is my pathetic attempt to right that balance. To answer your other question, no I don't want selective logging to take place because it appears to be a very energy intensive process; apart from which I'll be long dead before it's viable.
@@chrissscottt You seems to be a good guy, thinking in terms of ecology instead of economy, we need more of this.
Why someone gives this video a thumbs down is beyond my understanding. PBS tell the host to call me.
I'm certain it IS beyond your understanding.
We cannot feasibly stop all logging, so the solution lies in making the logger responsible for offsetting the lost production by replacing with new trees AND offsetting their carbon-capturing deficiency by funding other methods of carbon capturing.
Keeping old growth forests and planting new forests helps wildlife. Here in North Carolina, European "green" funds are being used to clear cut forests to make biomass pellets for Europe. Pretty hopeless situation when "green" funds are being abused. Sadly, temperature rise is already "baked" in. I don't know the time line but this will occur: Permafrost/methane hydrate will cause temps to rise too high causing wildfires etc. and phytoplankton will stop making oxygen as the Oceans warm. These two effects in either order will cause oxygen in the atmosphere to drop to 11% starting at high altitudes. Small fauna and some flora will survive at 11% oxygen. New normal 5-10 million years.
ruclips.net/video/gse2SRcqFDI/видео.html
That's dumb. What method captures more carbon than the energy it needs to function? How can a logger hope to offset the lost forest and how would the consumer afford that product if they did? Leave the forests alone. Use farmed wood and urban wood. Why are arborists paying to dump high value wood into landfills? There are solutions to be found within our waste but the solution is not to lay waste to our forests and planet whilst patting ourselves on the back for our clever accounting.
It's an entire chain jeremy.... quit placing blame on the "logger", maybe hold humanity accountable.
The idea is to force companies to be accountable at the cost of some figure recommended by scientists and manipulated by Congress. The cost will get passed down to the consumer and demand for reclaimed wood will rise, creating new opportunities in the marketplace. That is Capitalism, and it is not going anywhere, so you have to work within it.
Trouble is, it takes minutes to hack down a mature tree that has been flourishing for decades... possibly even 100s of years.
Planting a 6 inch seedling isn't going to make up for that loss. Planting thousands of 6 inch seedlings isn't going to make up for the loss of 1 mature tree... not for decades...
How ironic for this video I got an ad for Charmin talking about how they 'care about trees'.
We're not going to die in 20 years from climate change so properly planting of trees and better land management is a good thing to do. It does need to be done properly.
Okay, first of all, a little constructive criticism: 0:50 I doubt that is actually an old growth forest - there should be no more than about 50 to 60 trees per acre in an OGF, you got more than that in the foreground. It is very difficult to find any true old growth forests, though, as we've destroyed them. Other than that, very good reporting! This is so disheartening, we have managed to screw things up in so many ways that fixing these problems is now extremely daunting. Echoing all the others, please produce more of this reporting on forests.
It's even worse when you consider that this is one of our smaller problems.
@@Num6er47 Don't make me cry!
Thanks Rick! Re: old growth the definition of the term does seem to be a bit subjective but I'm not going to argue with Bev when she calls it old growth. And, as the producer of Weathered I reeeeally want to produce more on this subject. The more views it gets, the more likely that is so please share the video with your networks!
@@Num6er47 welp there's no question that fossil fuels release more carbon dioxide than land use like logging, but according to the IPCCC land use is the second largest contributor to climate change so it's not nothing.
@@ElementalWildfire Yeah, I forgot to send links to this video yesterday, I'll get on that. Please do produce more of this content, there are a ton of questions that need to be answered - and we all have to pitch in and fix this situation. Cheers!
Protection and conservation of old growth forests are needed and has been harped about for decades, I hope people listen.
I'd barely even class where they were stood as a forest, the tree coverage was nowhere near dense enough. Also all the trees looked identical, it looked more like a plantation than a natural forest.
the way homes are built these days, "long term" wood products like lumber are not going to be used very long before being replaced, due to shoddy construction, and trends in remodeling.
Also a lot of pointless stuff being built, and too big or too many.
Hang on, I get the feeling that you're comparing young forests vs old, but not new young forests vs unforested land. *That* is the comparison one must make to determine if young forests are carbon sinks. I can't imagine growing and cutting an acre of pole timber does *not* sequester carbon vs other agricultural uses?
Shhhhhh you're not supposed to ask real questions.
I take it that unforested means grassland. To me, the point of this video is asking if logging and using wood products can have a net zero carbon footprint if there is replantation. It's not about turning grass land into forests.
Forests have the problem or fire releasing carbon and the use of wood products releas carbon. Grassland has the problem of grazing animals releasing it as methane which is a more potent green house gas and cutting grass releases the carbon. Grassland is also more prone to erosion.
As far as I can tell, as carbon sinks, old forests > grasslands > young forests > barren land.
Don't know If you watched the whole video but they said young forests aren't a good carbon sink because they don't recapture released carbon. Old forests do because the canopy is large enough to stop the co2 leaving the area.
The measuremenst show that the young forests were carbon sources, and old ones were carbon sinks.
Obviously the gaps in young forest are a huge problem because the relatively unprotected soil is still releasing carbon. Obviously there needs to be diverse native plant grow introduced when the trees are replanted after cutting. I have personally seen how little care is given to replanting and the right plants will self propagate. Industry standards aside I have seen crews poison around the replants to suppress the groundcover so even less care is needed.
Meaning that we need groundcovers but corporate logging would rather they were gone.
Great video, something I'd never thought about but makes a lot of intuitive sense. And not surprising that established forests are more efficient. I wonder if this research could inform any planting strategies that could maximize the canopy coverage in those first 10-20 years and minimize the soil respiration.
She's talk about pine & lumber... fruit trees are different leaf structures.
Yes. I started a related aspect with soil... for broader purpose.
Can someone explain as how the young forest are still being called “source of carbon”. The net carbon increase in area would be when NEW carbon is released in the atmosphere. (By carbon I mean CO2).
So, let’s says, we start with a completely empty land. The net carbon released is 0 cause nothing is making CO2. Now we put in new young trees there. They start absorbing CO2 to make their 95% of mass. So, they are absorbing Co2. Then the animals and microbes eat the dead parts of those trees and release the CO2 back into the atmosphere. So, how can you say the new forrest is source of carbon? You started from a neutral source (empty land) to a carbon cycle where new trees absorb and microbes release. At best this new forrest would be neutral source of carbon, not a positive source of carbon. So, I think the scientist here has misrepresented that information. It’s not like more CO2 is being released by the newer forrest. You are using the same amount of Carbon from atmosphere, converting into trees and then converting into animals and microbes and releasing the same amount (at best) to the atmosphere.
Better way fo saying would be that new forrest are near 0 % efficient at capturing carbon while older forrest at at some high percent say (70 or above %) efficient at capturing carbon.
So, What am I missing here?
Carbon is one part of the picture and can't be looked at in isolation without the atmosphere, water cycle and soil. There is a biotic pump effect that draws moisture inland cooling and moderating weather. Also from some trees stomata there is a hydroscopic bacteria cloud condensing nuclei responsible for Most of the world's rain. These aspects are little know but very important as water influences 95% of the earth's heat dynamic. To learn more: soil microbiologist Walter Jehne, hydrologist Dr Michal Kravcik or journalist Judith D Swartz are great resources!
@@sureshkrjsl Just guessing here, but for this specific forest type with these tree species (that can really only become a new tree from a seed-they will not readily regenerate from a stump, basal, or copice sprout as some tree species will when they are younger), my hunch is that the now dead stumps, roots, and leaf/needle litter of the mature harvested trees are breaking down, releasing carbon, while the new trees are begining to grow. So, maybe if the video authors see this comment they could weigh-in, I do not think these experiments start from a pure "bare land" condition that is completely absent of past vegetation due to the fact that trees require a certain annual precipitation threshold to survive and grow well, so these experiments must be performed in a climate that can support a forest-certainly within a landscape that supported a forest in the past. The type of soil these experiments are conducted upon could also probably play a huge role in the variation of potential carbon storage outcomes through time as well. Anyway, so, at some point the carbon being released by those harvested tree stumps and roots probably reach equilibrium and are overtaken with the growth of the new forest, causing this observed 20ish year decline in the total carbon stored after harvesting while the new forest growth begins. Forest types that are adapted to disturbances like tornadoes and derechos, i.e. the eastern hardwood forests of the US, may have a slightly different time or capacity profile of carbon storage/release after logging or weather events due to their cool forest disturbance adaptations. I would very much like to see this experiment replicated and presented from the standpoint of different forest types and at different ages within these forest types to satisfy my curiousity (and in different soil types too!). Check out the oak-hickory forest type (as a broad example) to see what I'm referring to if you aren't already familiar.
Basically to help combat climate change do not cut down old growth forests
I'm curious as to how food forest would fair? In a well planed food forest there is very little open areas. It has the canopie trees, understory trees, plus it grows food. A win win if you ask me.
All forms of agriculture will emit more than it sequesters. Also, once the food is eaten, it will turn into more gas so 🤷🏽♂️
@@Zaihanisme according to Dr Koonin in his book "Unsettled" most of the emissions from animals comes from fermentation (the front end) not the back end (cow farts). So humans and animals that don't ferment wouldn't contribute much.
@@Jo-xf4nt breath of humans is 10% of emissions
Kudos for boiling things down to nine minutes, but complicated it is.
A multi-decade career as a Cascadian forester has led me to conclude that as far as carbon goes, growing timber and manufacturing wood products when accompanied by active forest management is -- at worst -- about carbon neutral, and depending on how we humans use wood, potentially of significant carbon benefit.
If anyone wonders or cares how slowly simmering the question has led me to a somewhat differing conclusion, my summary follows:
Every square metre of ground receives the same amount of solar energy (more or less, its complicated: MoLiC). Chlorophyll mediates the photosynthetic conversion of atmospheric CO2 to “fixed” carbon compounds in plants (MoLiC). If zero solar energy reaches the ground then the chloroplasts in the algae, moss, herb, shrub and tree layers above have in combination been 100% efficient in capturing the solar energy through photosynthesis. If not, and in reality, some of the energy gets through to warm the soil and some is reflected back towards the sky (MoLiC). Thus, the darker it is at the ground, the more CO2 captured. In the professor’s young forest most of the solar energy is reaching the ground to be in part reflected away and in part warm the soil. Warmer soil accelerates microbial respiration and CO2 release, until the soil becomes shaded again.
Some of the plant layers (moss, algae, herbs) produce fixed carbon that is rapidly decomposed and in part respired back to the atmosphere and in part incorporated into the soil to be released more gradually (weeks to millennia) when soil microbes exploit the carbon for their respiration needs. Meanwhile the upper plant layers also produce rapidly decomposed structures (leaves, etc.), but additionally fix some of the carbon as wood (cellulose + lignin). If this wood is protected from moisture and O2 it cannot be decomposed (MoLiC). Hence tree stems elevated off the ground and sealed within bark are slow to release their stored carbon.
It is the fate of the wood that is key to question of carbon. If we harvested the wood and could somehow fling it into the vacuum of space where there is no moisture, O2 or microorganisms then its carbon would never be released back into the planet’s atmosphere. If we promptly reforested the harvest site so that the solar energy capture and conversion by trees was optimized through most of the planned rotation age, then theoretically twice (MoLiC) as much carbon (wood on site plus wood stored in space) is now not in the atmosphere. At the end of a second rotation, 3X carbon not in the atmosphere. Third rotation 4X, etc.
Of course flinging tree stems into space would take a lot of energy which would negate any carbon storage benefit. However, we could store the wood indefinitely (MoLiC) by storing it terrestrially where there is little O2, such as under water or by burying. But an even better solution might be to store it in use. While the professor dismisses this by saying only 20% of wood makes it into long term forest products, this percentage varies (MoLiC) and really is up to us humans. If we replaced carbon-unfriendly structural products such as concrete, steel and aluminum with wood (CLT panels, lumber) wherever possible, the percentage would significantly increase. If we re-used the wood at end of structural life, the storage period would be further extended. Paper packaging can replace plastic and styrofoam derived from fossil fuels. Instead of discarding short-lived wood products and letting them decompose, if we burned them to make electricity that displaces fossil fuel electricity, more fossil carbon would be left in the ground. Similarly, along the production chain from forest to mill, wood residuals (branches, bark, sawdust, black liquor) can be used as replacements for fossil fuel energy. In the forest, active forest and woody fuel management can reduce the probability and/or severity of wildfire and thus reduce CO2, nitrous oxide and particulate releases to the atmosphere.
Wood is good. Google it.
I recall learning that something like 80% of the carbon stored by photosynthesizers is algae and such in the ocean. Is this accurate?
I think it's 80% of the oxygen is made by algae
@@DSAK55 And where to you think algae gets its O2 from? It's from (to a very large extent) the absorption of CO2 in the atmosphere. Another example, I guess, of teaching recycling and not math or science in school nowadays.
Yes. Oceanographer Jim Massa has done a video about this on his channel "Science Talk."
@@dangoerke51 except algae doesn't have the long life cycle that reefs and trees do. They don't really hold onto the carbon very long.
@@Tengokuchi You are attributing to me a statement that I did not make. I merely commented on the lack of understanding about (if I am not misinterpreting Dak's comment) a simple matter of chemistry/science.
As for your algae, reefs, and trees idea, I "guess" you are correct, but only in this regard: since algae have a short lifespan and trees have a long one (I assume your "reef" comment related to the non-living, stony structure for coral), the dead algae ITSELF will not retain the C. I would like to see some real scientific data, though, if you think this is a major point, since....
...even after the algae die, I suspect LOTS of the carbon of their bodies is consumed by other microbial life, either shortly after death or on the ocean's floor. It seems to me then that the question of how much of the algae's original C remains sequestered is not a matter amenable to a simple answer.
“The Last One” by W. S. Merwin…”well they came to the end of the day, there was one left stand, they would cut it tomorrow, they went away”…
6:06 Those stumps look like they're from second growth trees planted 40ish years ago, with the sole purpose of being logged in the future. Is the idea that you get rid of sustainable logging, which involves harvest and replanting? Pretty stupid imo
.
Edit: apparently yes, sustainable logging is apparently not sustainable according to these guys
I think it's a salvage cut in a burned area, look at all the snags and red deads in the background. Clear cuts arent very common on national forest land but are used in burns. Either way you're hitting the nail on the head, once again logging is unfairly painted as all bad.
Suzanne Simard gave an intriguing Ted Talk on how trees communicate. It's not just the trees that grow largest that are thriving, they share their water, and their nutrients with neighboring trees and saplings. Along with that resource sharing, comes an interesting form of "knowledge" that is passed on. Older trees have survived by withstanding floods, droughts, UV radiation, forest fires, diseases, and pests, and that information is not only stored in their rings, but is then passed on to younger trees. An entire library of "how to survive" manuals for trees could be lost if old growth forests are allowed to die out or be cut down. That resilience and the ability to store more carbon is something trees must learn over time by precedents that were set by generations before them.
Nice to see how a forest is viewed as an ongoing process instead of a static place.
Observing how nature develops a stretch of open soil there's a rather specific order in which things start to grow. Grasses and herbs in the first year, as they start covering the soil in a protective layer of biological material. Then faster growing tree species and shrubs transcend this base layer. Willow, birch, hawthorn.
The more biological material is added to the future forest floor, and the more shade is cast, the better its capacity to store moisture. A stable moisture content creates en environment in which a healthy microbal world and fungal network can grow. This network supports longer living species like oak and beech, forming a resilient community better able to cope with drought, pests and disease.
Considering these observations I'm curious if the best way of "starting" a forest might not simply be putting baby trees into the ground but more so laying the foundations on which a future forest can build itself. To add, grasses, herbs, seeds and time.
water=speed
How much carbon can an old growth forest can absorb? How much land must be set aside to make a difference? Is depending on tress to clean the atmosphere at this point equivalent to using an eye dropper to clean up an oil spill?
Republicans of Oregon refuse to sign cap-and-trade bills which would protect Oregonian forests from exploitation. Last time there was a vote, they walked out rather than regulate the logging process and timber market.
Because republicans value MONEY over all else. They are some of the most shortsighted humans on earth.
This is the same stupidity as banning mining in your local area but still allowing people to buy pots and pans.
You simply export the mining elsewhere.
Banning important natural resource extraction is asanine, unless you also have the balls to ban usage of finished materials as well.
Otherwise you're literally just putting your own aesthetic concerns over people's real world needs for resources, by driving up prices.
@@flakgun153 natural resource extraction as you put it should not just be done Anywhere. And we can certainly reduce our consumption as we are filling landfills and oceans at an alarming rate.
Its time we stop letting a few PROFIT HUGELY at the health/death detriment to ALL OF US.
We as humans need to be the stewards of this planet
Carbon tax may be better than cap and trade
Ok i am gonna be honest here.
I did NOT expect such a high quality video! You are amazing!
The way you speak, the way you presented everything! Simply elegant.
You just earned a subscriber!
Bravo.
Another question that was not asked is, "How does forest of Oak trees differ Pine trees with regard to carbon storage?"
Seaweed and Sea Grass are 100x more capable of taking up carbon can any rainforest of the same space. Please do a video on this. Thank you. Beautiful host.
also mangrove is said to be better than onland forests
This video is extremely important to watch! In my opinion this should reach as many people as possible. But in order to do that I believe you need to take another look at your title. I saw it and almost didn't watch because it seemed a bit borning. No offence, I am saying this so you can maybe try and reach more people. :)
The thing that upsets me the most are these folks who don't reuse, or destroy "good lumber"!! And I see this all the time on Craig's List or other Classified Sections!! I am talking about the people who tear into "cutting up a deck" or "tearing down a shed" without considering how much good lumber they are sawing up into pieces too small to be reused for anything!!!!
And I am not talking about cutting up a rotted board mind you....but the same guy (person) will saw up a bunch of 8 foot boards, just for the sake of sawing up wood, that could have been used for some other project!! And don't get me wrong I have thrown away scrap wood myself, it happens when a board to way too short to use!! BUT you can usually get a second life, out of an eight foot 2X4 just by sawing off two feet of it.....and there are people out there like myself, who wouldn't mind having an extra 2X4 or 4x4 post that is only six feet long!!
Not only does this save on the number of trees you have to cut down to make new lumber, but a six foot post can still be used to mount a hand rail to a set of new deck stairs, or a railing on a newly built deck in a lot of cases! You can even use a six foot 2X4 or 2X6 as a part of a header over a door or window just by cutting it to what ever your needed dimension is required!
BUT too often I see people saw up an 8 foot board into two foot sections without considering that "somebody somewhere might be able to use this", and even some deck boards can be reused as well, if they were "cut long" to allow them to be repurposed for some other usage!! A while back I was given a large shed build in 1971 and told "get rid of it"!! But upon looking at it, the main shed was not in bad shape, while the 8 foot by 8 foot front portion was bad!! Looking closer though, there were a lot of good 2x4s and 2x6s in the "bad front half", of the same shed.....so I carefully took it apart and retained the rear half of the structure!! In the end ultimately, I was able to build part of a deck, and make some repairs to the old shed half I kept with the "bad half" of the building I disassembled...AND it gave me enough spare pieces of wood to build a couple other small projects with it, like an outdoor storage bench I am using to this day!! I do have to admit that at the same time I had also been asked to "remove a deck" and some of that old deck ALSO became part of three other projects I made as well too.....all out of what most people would have simply "tossed in the trash"!! But the half of shed AND the old deck was totally free, which not only saved me a ton of money......but saved the environment because I didn't have to use another tree to remake something else out of wood that I already had!!
Thank you for this! This is new information to me and seems very important. It also calls into question cap & trade practices and the actual effective offsets that are being purchased as carbon credits. If organizations are planting trees and selling that service to companies as credits, who point to that activity as balancing out their typical fossil fuel emissions or even as justification for *increasing* their emissions, then we have a real problem on our hands. Those carbon credits are actually a *liability* that *increases* carbon footprint until they reach a maturity date of about 20 years. THEN they have value as offsets, but only if those trees actually survive that long in the first place.
Yep, in any management decision we really have to follow the science. Areas that are no longer forested but were generations ago could be planted for some benefit which is called afforestation. But if we're cutting old forest and replanting young forest, the science is pretty clear, thanks to Dr. Law's work. That is what we frequently see happening.
yeah, cap and trade is a scam... straight carbon tax to be preferred... even better - perhaps? - accessing alternate sources, e.g. hemp etc...
Alex Riddles In Bali, since 1989, I have inspired Balinese villagers & ecovillagers to plant over 200,000 food trees in their FAMILY COMPOUNDS.
Thanks for the question.
#asiflifeonearthmatters
Many of the families, now
From the get-go, old growth forests are older than 150 years old by an order of magnitude. Second or third growth forests can have similar but very different forest composition and processes. Science reporters need to get their science correct!
Awesome info and very well presented- just subscribed 🙏
Best part is, I've played in all the forests in this video. Not only that, but I've defenitly seen some of these towers in my (metaphorical) backyard
We're literally killing ourselves slowly but surely...😔
The question this leaves me with is "is planting a new forest on what is presumably degraded land better than not planting it (in the short term)?"
Simple answer might be it would be bad for you but good for your children.
Same questiom here - I don't get how growing even a single tree, harvesting it at a young stage and storing it's C-rich biomass as lumber is net positive🤔
@@იოსებხანუკაშვილი If I got your question correctly, what you are wondering is if it's going to turn into lumber, how it is net positive.
If that is the case, the answer is, it is not. If you take pains to grow a tree and wait for 10-20 years, you leave it be.
If you want lumber then, you use young trees. It will still not be net zero but that will not release that huge amount by cutting older trees.
Would love to know if you have other interpretation.
@@neelroy2918 I don't get what role the age of the plant plays in the equation😳
To my understanding, even a young tree, harvested and used as furniture or construction material represents C taken from the air and stored in biomass - how can this process release more carbon then stored?
I mean, respiration, be it of plants or microbial, oxidises the C that was fixed and not some fossil stuff like we do, and even if only a small part is used for building biomass - this small part makes the process already net-negative, doesn't it?
@@იოსებხანუკაშვილი releasing _more_ carbon than stored would violate first law of thermodynamics. So that's not a possibility:)
- young trees would release more co2 than older trees for first 10-20 years.
So whatever you do, it may as well tally.
- the problem they proved is when you do that to older trees. Because they release less co2, because they are all grown up, if you use them instead then, planting ne trees would not being as much benefit.
So, we need to leave old trees alone.
Felling newer trees is better option because they have not reached to a place where c to o ratio is beneficial to us.
Does that make sense?
This is north america forest. Tropical jungles can be a different story as tropical trees are more dense and lush, and therefore absorbs way more CO2 from the atmosphere.
If we really want to halt climate change, as futile as that may sound, we need to stop cutting down trees. Period.
stop cutting old growth, for sure.
could cut a lot of the understory in the US ponderossa forest, and improve the forest a great deal towards getting back to an old growth state.
I really appreciate Beth Law's Strategic Insights into Xlimate ACTION.
Please let her know that my 1981 breakthrough in soil-related area expands her concept but for soils.
I think what humanity is pulling out of the ground (oil and coal) is orders of magnitude greater than what forests can offset.
Yes. That’s why we need CCU. Because it makes pulling carbon out of the air profitable
I'm not sure. I think the natural carbon cycle is still much larger than the fossil fuel carbon input. If not, the CO2 level wouldn't go down each summer.
Of course, much of the natural cycle is oceanic, not forest. So your point is still probably true, but maybe not by orders of magnitude
@@chertfoot1500 I'll admit, I haven't looked into it close enough, but trees are only storing what they can hold until they die, and then the CO2 returns back into the atmosphere as they decay or burn up.
@@yaash4123 I did find a nice illustration just now. In gigatons/ yr:
39.9 = total emissions by people
12.5 = total absorption by land
9.2 = total absoprtion by ocean
18.7 = net addition to atmosphere
Fuel management and reduction decisions are a glaring omission here. Perhaps too deep of a rabbit hole? Fire management programs like fuel reduction could in the short term release carbon, but we've been losing a lot of those old growth (think California) carbon sinks lately to forest fires. I'd like to hear some math and measurements on how to balance this.
Fire in an old growth forest does not release much forest carbon. The above ground carbon in a post fire snag forest remains. There have been recent OSU detailed studies of post fire carbon quantity and I believe the numbers are around 90% of carbon remains post fire.
@@chuckwiller1638 fascinating and counter-intuitive!
@@liwoszarchaeologist I agree, It is on first thought counter intuitive. But when I thought about it, after hearing about the research, it made sense. I'll note, on a recent field show-and-tell site visit in the Siuslaw NF, the district silviculturalist brought up fire as a threat to carbon sequestration. He said something like "see it all go up in flames." Not what in fact happens apparently.
@@chuckwiller1638 Depends on the intensity of the fire, right? You can't say fire does this or that in old growth without qualifying what type of fire you are talking about.
Horses for courses it depends on the forest, here in the tropical half of Australia it takes only 16 medium sized trees to offset one average household that not that much. And only one two to seasons of growth. Forestry is a solution if appropriate species and methods are used.
Also I’d like to see a study that took into consideration all of the carbon based life forms that reside in the forest and what fungi are doing as well.
the measurements accounted for all of that. that is why they put towers on critical locations.
exactly! the soil microbiome doesn't just respire the organic carbon, it also uses it to grow their mass and that biomass is stored carbon🦠
That’s why they had a tower that was at different heights and also had ground monitoring to address this. It’s almost like you disregarded the video
Love how vacuous women are possessed by carbon. Everything in life is carbon including humans!!
That was a huge oversight. They used plantations as part of their study, with chemical fertilizers and that affects carbon sequestration. That will certainly skew results.
Africa is getting greener. The earth can manage itself.
This was a bit counterintuitive but the profs explaining that Old Growth Forest sink of Carbon is greatest in the Forests that represent 3% of British Columbia Canada while in the USA it must be much lower than 1%. So to say from the onset that the Forests in the USA sink more carbon than the Amazon is patently false.
No. The professor is saying that old growth forests in the PNW store more carbon *per acre* than the Amazon.
@@nisnber5760 some people don't understand but go all in with an argument just to "be right", you know?
@@nisnber5760 of course but that does not mean they produce more on a annul basis.
Love the host Maiya May. Not only is she well spoken and intelligent but extraordinarly beautiful as well.
One other thing: does anybody know if anyone is studying the possibility of planting 30 to 60 trees per acre (probably five or more years old) and at the same time planting ground vegetation that will prevent other trees from establishing themselves? One of the reasons the fires in California have been so horrendous over the last four years is because we typically have 1,200 trees per acre. Most of those trees have DBHs of 8 inches or less - it's not much more than standing kindling. The problem with replanting the way it's done now is that we never have the follow up required. Replanting requires forest management that has not been practiced in the last 40 or so years. So, is it possible to plant in such a way as to avoid the forest management issues that will never be addressed? The ground veg selected would have to be incapable of dominating the land once the canopy closes above.
What you are asking for is simply called routine maintenance. Don't just plant and go, but maintain. This can be done manually with a lot of labor cost, or by controlled burning as was done by Native Americans. For maximum carbon storage, chip the waste and leave as a layer on the ground. 12" (30cm) of chips stores water well into summer.
@@markgrayson7514 Hi Mark, thanks for that. This of course would be extremely beneficial, but the funds keep getting cut for this type of management. Hopefully that will change. Just found some info on "accelerated forest succession." This is an attempt to revive eco systems and perhaps avoid some of the costs of future management. Just started looking into this, it may make for some good YT content. Cheers!
You should also plant mushrooms to help establish the mycelium network of the forest.
@@viperswhip Yeah, I agree with that.
there are agroforestry research institutions testing everything. apparently there are no generalizable straight forward solutions yet. leaving a place alone for 20 years or sporadic but selective planting of local trees and bushes might do it. Grasses are doomed where water is not abundant.
Some interesting and valuable studies. I am concerned about her numbers concerning harvested forests. She makes an assumption that once harvested the carbon ends up back in the air in a fairly short period of time. This needs clarification and research. Wood products (eg. lumber) should have 40-100 years of direct use life. Perhaps most of this goes to a landfill which starts (not ends) the slow decay and re-introduction of the carbon. But into what? We know that grasses in the UK/Ireland make peat which is a long-term store of carbon. What does wood in the landfill make. I don't know and we should try to find out. I am also concerned about forest fires in these forests that we "leave alone". We are already seeing that this is not working in California. Some strategic lumber harvesting could make a huge difference in making the forests survive fires. One forest fire negates all of the carbon storage that we were counting on. The climate is complex and if we are going to try to "manage" carbon we need to do the research and accept that we don't know everything.
I appreciate your critical thinking....
I fail to understand how young forests can be a carbon source, where is that "new" carbon coming from? They mentioned "the ground" but does the presence of young trees somehow affect this carbon release from the ground? If not then it's still benefitial to plant the trees
Microbes in the soul breaking down biomass and tree respiration
@@fuq1nutube If there is no forest planted there however, the soil will still respirate right? (even more likely, as zero shade from young trees), So the trees themselves are still sequestering carbon AND growing to protect that soil more...
Right? Best way to do it I believe is with strong fast growing pioneer trees(and shrubs even) that will create canopies fast
@@woblobsterbeatboxer5124 That souds reasonable. Icould say for certain, this isn't something I have looked into. My previous response was based off info from the video.
Old trees are very different than new trees. Here on the east coast, all the old trees that had been growing for thousands of years, ALL cut down in less than 100 years. It literally makes me cry it is so sad
Why haven’t they been planted back? I have wondered about that for years.
What about the Broad lead forests in the East? They are typicalyy more dense with Trees, and grow quicker than Pine Forests. The research would be interesting.
With proper land management we can also increase the speed that a forest reaches "Old growth" status.
We don’t have 20 years ? It’s comments like that that really piss me off !
what pisses me off is how many stupid and lazy people are out there believing it.
The old-growth Mountain Ash forests in southern Australia are the tallest flowering trees in the world (up to 100 metres) and they store an enormous amount of carbon, far more than juvenile saplings and young trees.
They dont have the ash beetle borer down there?
You're forgetting the role a diverse, synth chem free forest has, and that this video is omitting that.
While this article is good. If old growth forests are left un touched they will catch fire and release carbon.
Lumber has to be for long term products. Myowaki forests are net carbon sink and can be done easily with 1~2 acres of land.
I'll admit, this is not a question I've ever asked.
Glad we are relearning stuff I was taught in the 1970s.
And that's not to be snarky. Really glad.
Haha, riiiiight? Seems like we are - in some ways - always going to be relearning ecological concepts that challenge the story we believe about the world. In what class/major/department did you learn about forest carbon???
Thanks for the work in sharing scientific data we all need. I agree with FeatheryFool. We should be studing other climax communities like oak woodlands and perenial grass lands which I suspect fix carbon at a higher rate once they mature.
If it is mature forests, not mature trees that are good carbon sinks, surely a simple solution would be to ban clear-cutting of large areas, e.g. you cannot remove more than 10% of trees from a square mile of forest in a year, no removing the edges of a forest, and at least 80% of remaining trees must be 20+ years old, and you can only "clear cut" narrow strips maybe 30' wide, big enough to allow the heavy machinery through, but small enough that the forest canopy can quickly return, so you get a strip of young trees in a mature forest, do it right and you would likely not even need to replant, the forest would take care of that itself.
As for 2 decades being too long to have an effect on Climate Change, in 1989 we were told if we did not fix climate change within a decade many coastal towns and cities, as well as many island nations, would be underwater by 2010, but we have seen single figure millimetres of sea-level rise in 32 years, not the 5-10 metres that were predicted, "climate scientists" and politicians overestimated the sea level rise by more than a thousand times, and every few years we keep getting those same estimates "fix things in the next decade or we are doomed", bearing in mind it has consistently been giving a highly pessimistic timescale, I suspect something that helps in 2-3 decades will help soon enough to mitigate a lot of what people are worried will happen in the next 5 years.