Climate Change Initiative
Public Lands Program — Restoring Natural Systems & Creating Resilience
At long last, the threat of climate change has made the transition from an admitted risk to a top priority on the nation’s agenda. As the urgency and consensus around climate change and the resulting global warming grows, scientists and policymakers are seeking to develop and define the role of public land in combating climate change. Currently, US forests offset the equivalent of 12 percent of US carbon emissions and officials are assessing the ability of public land to serve as carbon sinks to offset even greater amounts of our carbon emissions.
More than half of Oregon is federally owned land. Consequently, our federal forestland can play an important role in helping to mitigate between 10 to 20 percent of carbon emissions from our consumption of fossil fuels and other heat trapping gases. If properly cared for, this forest landscape can continue to exist and provide us with clean water, native fish and wildlife, and help us deal with the causes of climate change. In various venues, Crag has been called upon to explore the link between climate change, forests, soils and oceans. We are taking action to encourage state and federal agencies to fully consider the implications of climate change and the potential increase in drought, fire, rain and windy weather in our natural systems.
While forest policy under the Bush Administration’s initiative had a stated goal of increasing forest health, the controversial practices that were chosen and the lack of science behind them actually moved us backward from the goal.
In the face of increasing climate variability and potential stress, we must build resilience in these systems. The need to reduce forest fuel loads in certain forests types is being promoted as a way to provide timber harvest, but either way the logging removal also has the same short- and long-term environmental impacts.
According to OSU’s top climate scientist, Dr. Mark Harmon, removing trees or biomass from the forest generally punches holes in an already leaky carbon bucket, causing additional loss. Expanding on this analogy, Harmon explains that the bucket will hold water, even if there are leaks as long as there is a constant supply of water. However, as the leaks get bigger, the amount of water the bucket can hold will diminish to a point at which the bucket ceases to function. Like water, carbon is constantly being poured into our forests, but is also always leaking out through a number of different means—decomposition, respiration, combustion, leaching, and erosion. Disturbances, whether natural or human caused, increase the “leaks” in the bucket, making it more difficult for forests to store carbon.
Mature and old growth forests must be preserved because these olders forests are far more effective at storing carbon than young fast growing plantations. While young forests may absorb more carbon than older forests for a certain short period of time certain during their overall development, these young forests stay at this level of optimal carbon storage for only a brief period. Before and after this period and over the long haul in which carbon sequestration can legitimately be measured, younger forests will store less carbon. Because we cannot keep forests at this one optimal age, the best absorbers of carbon over time are older forests. Older forests contain larger trees, and thus larger carbon stocks. The larger trees are also far less likely to burn in a wildfire and they store carbon for far longer periods of time. Because older forests are more effective carbon sinks than young forests, reducing harvests in these older mature and old growth forests would therefore benefit carbon storage.
In addition to preserving old growth forests, the most effective practices to increase carbon sequestration are reducing deforestation and increasing forest planting on bare ground, a strategy known as afforestation. By reforesting denuded lands and increasing the resilience of existing forests, we can increase the amount of carbon that is sequestered in our nation’s forests. Dead vegetation and soil are also very important components of our carbon sinks. smothered roots continues to hold carbon, and as it decomposes, this live carbon is transferred into the soils which can hold carbon for a very long period of time. While post-fire (salvage) logging removes dead wood and stores it in wood products, the carbon from these dead trees would be stored in decomposed soil for far longer than the average life span of a consumer wood product made from fire-killed trees.
In the long term, climate change will cause a decrease in forest growth and as emissions increase, the changing climate will adversely affect the ability of forests to act as carbon stores. If prompt action is not taken, these same forests could become carbon sources instead of carbon sinks. As the climate continues to warm, potentially hotter and driers summers have been predicted to larger and more intense fires and insect outbreaks. Certain lower elevation Ponderosa pine dominated forests, which are dry forests primarily located in eastern Oregon’s arid climate, may be more sensitive to fire as temperatures rise and scientists have recommended that we take action to ensure the resilience of these forests in an uncertain future. Under the recent Healthy Forest Initiative the Bush administration sought to apply this concern which only applies to a portion of the forested landscape and confound the problem as the pre-text to go into other healthy native forest landscapes.
With proper management and scientific information, the nation’s public land can act as part of the solution to our growing climate change crisis. Under the Northwest Forest Plan, our federal land has already increased its carbon stores and the United States could and should be recognized for this effort in any internationla climate talks. Additional similar carbon reserves would increase our standing on the world stage. The best available science must guide us as we select the best policies to reduce carbon and tackle global warming.
Explore the Best Available Science:
INR Climate Change White Paper
Regional Climate Change Impacts: Northwest, US Global Change Research Program
