[Decent article on University of Vermont research regarding logging and
carbon storage...

http://www.burlingtonfreepress.com/article/20100115/NEWS02/100114031/Demonstrating-carbon-storage-strategies

For carbon storage purposes...no logging is the best....then beyond
that, the lighter the logging, the more the carbon storage....

Science finally catches up to common sense yet again!
Chris]

Demonstrating carbon storage strategies

UVM professor finds lighter logging may help environment

GLENN RUSSELL, Free Press

UVM professor Bill Keeton discusses logging methods that help forests become better storehouses of carbon during a tour of the university’s Jericho Research Forest on Tuesday.

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By Candace Page, Free Press Staff Writer • Friday, January 15, 2010

Page

JERICHO — On a rocky hillside off Tarbox Road, Bill Keeton is demonstrating how Vermont forest owners can have their carbon and sell some of it, too.

The University of Vermont forest researcher tramped on snowshoes past big red oaks, slim maples and snow-laden hemlocks earlier this week, showing off a well-stocked forest that seemed managed only by Mother Nature.

 

 

Selective logging stores more carbon

 

In fact, Keeton directed a logging operation here seven years ago. Twenty percent of the trees were harvested — one tree here, another tree there, a small group over here, scattered across the five-acre plot.

That’s a lighter thinning than many timber owners would carry out, but one that produced a benefit Keeton didn’t foresee.

Compared with traditional, more intensive logging, the Jericho cut left a forest that will store 20 percent to 57 percent more carbon in its growing trees, dead wood and forest duff — carbon that won’t soon turn into a heat-trapping carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.

“Our study by no means tells people they have to stop logging or let everything turn into old growth if they want to increase carbon storage,” Keeton said. “We are trying to give forest owners different scenarios that would lead to a net increase in carbon storage over business as usual, if that’s what they would like to do.”

In a world worried about carbon emissions and global warming, Vermont’s forests face competing demands to provide timber for forest products, biomass for fuel to displace fossil fuels, and a storehouse for carbon.

The day is approaching when woodlot owners may be able to sell carbon credits as well as saw logs and wood chips.

But to do so, they will have to demonstrate “additionality,” that is, that they are changing their forest management in some way to increase their land’s carbon storage.

That’s where Keeton’s work comes in. As a forest ecosystem scientist and co-director of UVM’s Carbon Dynamics Lab, he has led a series of studies using Northeastern forest sites and computer simulation to analyze the long-term effect of forest management techniques on carbon uptake and storage.

Ben Machin, a consulting forester in Corinth, said Keeton’s results are eagerly awaited.

“We’re starting to see interest among landowners in managing for carbon sequestration, but we haven’t gotten to the point where we know what recommendations to make,” he said.

“Every bit of research Bill does gets us one step closer to understanding what needs to be done to get that additional level of sequestration,” he added.

To store carbon, cut less

Growing trees take carbon dioxide from the air and convert it into wood, locking it up until the tree is burned, or dies and slowly decomposes.

As policymakers search for ways to reduce the globe’s carbon emissions, and increase carbon storage, logging seemed to hold out hope as a way to capture more carbon while still producing immediate income for the landowner from the sale of wood.

Log off an old, slow-growing forest, the theory ran, and make way for young, fast-growing trees that will restock the carbon storehouse by sucking up carbon at a speedier rate than the trees they replace.

Keeton’s research is among the studies that have refuted that theory.

In his latest study, he and graduate student Jared Nunery used field data and complex computer models to simulate the effect of different forest management techniques — including the kind of highly selective cut they developed in Jericho — on 32 forest plots across northern New England and New York.

Their results were clear: In every case, an undisturbed forest stored more carbon — from 39 percent to 118 percent more — than a forest that was logged, no matter how lightly.

But they also found that in virtually every case, woodlot owners can harvest timber and still increase carbon storage by decreasing the intensity of the logging they have traditionally done.

When clear-cuts are replaced with shelterwood cuts that leave behind some trees, carbon storage increases. When selective but intensive cuts are replaced with selective cuts that leave more trees, carbon storage increases. When the number of years between cuts increases, so does carbon storage.

A shift from the highest intensity of logging to the lowest intensity increased carbon storage by 57 percent. Less drastic changes to lower the intensity and frequency of cuts still produced additional carbon storage of 20 percent.

 

Young forests 'can't catch up'

The reason, in simple terms, is that logging removes wood — carbon — from the forest. While Keeton’s study accounted for the products made from that biomass, including pulp, wood chips and durable wood products, the fact is that most of those products are short-lived and soon become a source of atmospheric carbon dioxide.

“The assumption had been that after cutting you have a rapidly growing young forest, plus you have stored a lot of carbon in wood products that will be around for a long time,” he said. “It turns out that wood products are not as strong a storage sink as we thought.”

“On average less than 10 percent of a harvested tree’s carbon remains in use in wood products after 60 years,” he added. “The rest has been emitted to the atmosphere through burning or decomposition.”

In the meantime, an undisturbed forest, or a lightly harvested forest, continues to grow, adding woody biomass. Some trees die, adding to the pool of dead wood on the forest floor.

“The young forest just never catches up to the old forest with that huge carbon reservoir,” Keeton said.

Keeton, an effervescent man who speaks with passion about his research, repeats: His research does not advocate for leaving forests untouched.

But, he added, “The critical thing is not necessarily maximizing carbon storage. It is that landowners who want to sell carbon credits must meet the requirement for additionality. You have to do something that leads to a net increase in carbon storage over business-as-usual.”

“There’s no single way to do that. It depends on the age of the forest, the species, how it was managed in the past,” he said.

For forest owners who do wish to manage their land less intensively, there are benefits besides carbon storage that come with that decision: bigger trees that will be more valuable in the future; improved wildlife habitat, watershed protection and biodiversity, he said.

What work like his will do, Keeton and others say, is provide the scientific data to carbon markets to more reliably quantify the carbon benefits achieved by changes in forest practices.

Although the buying and selling of credits has largely been limited to reforestation projects, that is beginning to change. The California-based Climate Action Reserve has begun to register carbon offsets from improved forest management projects.

Keeton’s research provides the kind of data that will be needed for similar forest carbon offset projects in the Northeast. His and Nunery’s study will appear this spring in the scientific journal Forest Ecology and Management.

 

Biomass: The next frontier

Keeton’s next research will focus on one particular use of Northeastern forests: biomass energy — burning wood for heat and electricity in place of some fossil fuels.

He will study the net greenhouse gas emissions that result from a range of biomass harvesting practices, taking into account the fossil fuels displaced by wood chips.

At Middlebury College, wildlife ecologist Steve Trombulak could use that data as he works with students to assess the effect on forest carbon storage of the college’s new biomass energy plant.

“At every level, there has been the assumption that burning biomass is carbon neutral — but that is only true if the biomass doesn’t compromise the land’s ability to grow more trees,” he said. “Now foresters and ecologists are all starting to realize the same gaps in our thinking.”

The assumption is that, while wood burned for energy releases carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, that wood will be replaced by growing trees that over time will take up an equal amount of carbon dioxide.

“But if you cut your forest and pave it over, it will not resequester anymore carbon,” said Bob Perschel, a Massachusetts forester and regional director of the Forest Guild who works on biomass energy issues in the Bay State. On the other hand, a culled, well-tended forest may grow back quickly.

“We just need a better handle on how carbon is moving around,” he said. “We are desperately waiting for Bill’s biomass results.”

Contact Candace Page at 660-1865 or cpage@bfp.burlingtonfreepress.com. Read her blog, Tree at My Window at www.burlingtonfreepress.com. Follow her on Twitter @candacepage.

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