Forests and Global Warming

The arguments here are a bit much. However the major opportunity is to increse global forest cover as much as possible. Forest cover absorbs much more solar energy which means that far less solar energy is lost back into space. Thus the global heat bank actually increases.

For the past several thousand years, human activity has actually seriously cut into that global heat bank, mostly through inappropriate deforestation. Some minor reversal has taken place and the eastern USA can be particularly noted as likely Europe also.

A good first step in the process is merely to replace wood as fuel. That is mostly done and as the remaining global economy arises from subsistence wood fuel will disappear. From there the forests themselves will largely begin to revive. I will note that this is the most important step anyway and requires no management or particular intervention.

I am personally an advocate of managing near natural forests to optimize their health and productivity. Finding economic models and developing best practice is an achievable goal and can provide a satisfying life way for hundreds of millions of families. Recall that the northeast Indians largely managed their forests on an ongoing basis. This was partly driven to by the need to eliminate ground cover for enemies and to provide ample food trees close to home.

Care consists of little more than getting out in the spring to chip out the dead falls and pull a few stems in the process and perhaps some obvious thinning. Obviously more could be done, but that is the least and that soon produces a park-like woodland. Send in goats, deer and cattle and all the brush will be cropped back and a very diverse ecology will arise. This has been done for centuries in isolated cases and needs to simply become mandated as an ownership responsibility.

Forests could be global warming factor

by Staff Writers

Irvine, Calif. (UPI) Jun 11, 2012

http://www.terradaily.com/reports/Forests_could_be_global_warming_factor_999.html

Fertile soils in U.S. forests could release vast amounts of carbon dioxide due to global warming, creating a "vicious cycle" of heat increases, scientists say.

Research led by the University of California, Irvine, found heating of soil in northeastern U.S. forests by 10 to 20 degrees increased the release of carbon dioxide by as much as eight times.

"We found that decades-old carbon in surface soils is released to the atmosphere faster when temperatures become warmer," Francesca Hopkins of UCI's Earth system science department said. "This suggests that soils could accelerate global warming through a vicious cycle in which man-made warming releases carbon from soils to the atmosphere, which, in turn, would warm the planet more."

Soil, containing large amounts of carbon in decaying leaves and roots, stores more than twice as much of the element as does the atmosphere, scientists said.

Northeastern woodlands that were once farm fields are currently one of Earth's largest carbon sinks, holding nearly 26 billion tons, but climate scientists are concerned that with ongoing warming trees and soils could become sources, rather than repositories, of greenhouse gas emissions.

"These are carbon dioxide sources that, in effect, we can't control," Hopkins said. "We could control how much gasoline we burn, how much coal we burn, but we don't have control over how much carbon the soil will release once this gets going."