Lecture 16 - November 24, 2009 |
Essential |
Background |
Outline
- forest practices for timber
- non-timber value of forests
- carbon storage and sequestration
- case studies
- course evaluations
Using viewers and Multiple Perspectives
- systems
- network
- preview of "accounting"
Life lessons that our grandmas taught us:
That might be wrong this time:
A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush.
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Forest management practices for harvesting timber
- types of cutting
- clear cut
- rotational or strip - plantation
- selective
- other variations
- shelter tree
- seed tree
- coppice
- environmental considerations
- water quality
- bio-diversity
- erosion and land slides
- fire danger
- subsequent use
- tree replanting
- farming
- housing
- industrial development
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coppice farm:
description
calculations |
Non-timber forest financial value
- extractive - financial or economic value
- fuel
- lumber
- pulp for paper
- mining
- hunting?
- non-extractive economic value
- ecosystem services
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Carbon budgets
- Systems view:
- reducing carbon into the atmosphere by:
- maintaining carbon storage in current forests
- decreasing carbon released during deforestation or degradation of ecosystem (soil loss, etc)
- increasing carbon taken up during growth of a forest (such as those previously cut)
- Accounting -
- what information do we need to make a decision and what system do we set up to get that information?
- we don't want to miss anything - "completeness"
- example - leakage
- carbon is sequestered in one place but is just being released somewhere else
- we don't want to double count anything either
- new carbon take up can't also be counted as what is already stored
- don't get to count the leaves when they're on the tree and also soil accumulation that year (from falling leaves)
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systems diagram
environmental accounting |
Economist 9/26/2009 |
Management for Carbon
- FIRE
- forests as a sink for carbon
- need to count how much is lost to wildfires compared to how much is lost to controlled burns
- use simulation models with different treatments to explore the outcomes
- without wildfire - control (no action) had largest carbon stored
- with wildfire - control had the most emmissions from fire and the least stored in trees
- control burns - intermdediate
- best - push forest to low-density stand of fire resistant pines
- LOGGING METHODS
- tropical forest
- represent about half of the 558 Pg carbon stored in all vegetation
- Peta gram (10^15 g) - 1 metric ton = 10^6 g
- 558 billion metric tons
- selective logging may loose upto 70% of storage potential (damage)
- 20 years of study and then extrapolating
- use of intensive timber stand improvements
- getting rid of bad trees, selective harvest
- forest carbon recovered in 45 years after logging
- without TSI - 100 years to recover carbon lost
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Hurteau and North 2009, North et al. 2009
Blanc et al. 2009 |
Managing for forest ecological integrity
- composition
- structure
- function
- as compared to its natural or historical range of variation
- large forests and parks compared to smaller historical parks
- report the results green, yellow, red - stoplight metaphor
- in the context of global climate change
- rapid change of climate doesn't allow time for the forests to adapt to new composition
- climate models predict NH will have the climate of either Virginia or N. Carolina under low and high CO2 emission scenarios (TNC - Winter 2009)
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network view |
Tierny et al 2009 |
Several Case Studies of REDD
- carbon emissions from deforestation accounts for 17 to 18% of global carbon emissions
- that's more than all vehicles (13%)
- planting new trees counts but not cutting down forests doesn't count - until REDD
- some countries have already preserved their forests (how can that count)
- country (or larger) level of accounting is needed to avoid leakage
- in Brazil, 90% of deforestation is illegal - how can that be controlled?
- land tenure - ownership by local people is a real problem
- Economist - although REDD has risks there are more risks with continued deforestation
- (reverse statement of the precautionary principle - i.e. we know what we are doing is bad, try something else)
- Bolivia
- N. California
- Indonesia
Some interesting facts:
- young redwood forests in California that are growing can take up about 3 tons CO2 per year per acre
- can hold 500 tons per acre total
- a car produces about 5 tons per year
- Pacific Corp has agreed to pay about $10/ton
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case studies: The Nature Conservancy
Bolivia: Washington Post
carbon payments |
References:
Blanc, L., Marion Echard, Bruno Herault, Damien Bonal, Eric Marcon, Jerome Chave, and Christopher Baraloto (2009). "Dynamics of above ground carbon stocks in a selectively logged tropical forest." Ecological Applications 19(6): 1397-1404.
Hurteau, M., and Malcolm North (2009). "Fuel treatment effects on tree-based forest carbon storage and emissions under modeled wildfire scenarios." Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment 7(8): 409-414.
North, M., Matthew Hurteau, and James Innes (2009). "Fire suppression and fuels treatment effects on mixed-conifer carbon stockes and emissions." Ecological Applications 19(6): 1385 - 1396.
Tierney, G., Don Faber-Langendoen, Brian R. Mitchell, W Gregory Shriver, and Jampes P. Gibbs (2009). "Monitoring and evaluating the ecological integrity of forest ecosystems." Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment 7(6): 308-316.
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