Jump to content
  • Greater conservation of forests is needed to mitigate climate change


    Favourable biogeoclimatic conditions on the Discovery Islands make this area well-suited for sequestration of atmospheric carbon and long-term safe storage of forest carbon, an important strategy in mitigating climate change.

     

    HummingbirdLakepeninsula2019.jpg.3e095a5495b5227961f9543c99bdfb9d.jpg

    Douglas fir veterans on the peninsula at Hummingbird Lake, Quadra Island

     

    THERE ARE TWO MAIN WAYS in which clearcut logging on the Discovery Islands is resulting in increased concentration of carbon in the atmosphere, thereby contributing to climate change.

    First, when a forest stand is converted to a clearcut, the process of carbon sequestration—the removal of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and the subsequent long-term storage of carbon in the forest—is brought to a sudden halt. Modern agroforestry, which liquidates natural forests and turns them into short-rotation plantations, results in a profound decline in the level of carbon sequestration capacity, the magnitude of which is described below.

    Secondly, logging a forest initiates a premature return to the atmosphere of most of the carbon sequestered by that forest. This occurs both rapidly (intentional slash pile burning and combustion of the residual biomass by forest fires) and more gradually (decomposition of the dead biomass left in the clearcut). It also occurs through decomposition of manufactured wood products over time, which BC’s forests ministry has shown occurs much more rapidly than if the forest had been left to store the carbon.

    To understand why we need to conserve more forests just to reduce logging’s considerable impact on climate change, we need to understand why modern forestry practices cause such a large loss of carbon sequestration capacity. We also need to comprehend the vast quantity of carbon that’s being prematurely returned to the atmosphere as a consequence of logging. Let’s start with modern forestry’s plan to limit the maximum age of forests to around 60 years and the impact that has on carbon sequestration capacity.

    Through photosynthesis, trees remove carbon from the atmosphere and store it in their trunk, branches, roots and foliage. On the Discovery Islands, forests are able to continue this process of sequestering and storing carbon for hundreds of years. The widespread presence of large stumps on these islands—and a few remaining primary forests with large trees in them (we have found trees greater than 500 years of age on Quadra)—are proof that the islands’ forests have great potential for safe, long-term carbon sequestration and storage.

    When the idea of managing BC’s forests on the basis of “sustained yield” was first promoted in the middle of the 20th century, forest managers were promising that the period of time between consecutive cuts would be 100 to 120 years. Now, though, it is not uncommon in BC for plantations of only 45 to 60 years of age to be logged. That rotation period will result in a much lower level of carbon sequestration than would have occurred naturally. How much lower?

    This project’s analysis of ministry of forests’ growth and yield data shows that allowing forests to grow to 300 years of age would result in approximately 3.7 times as much tonne-years of carbon storage as would be the case if those forests were cut every 60 years over that 300-year period.

    It’s necessary to understand that the dimension of time—how many years a tonne of carbon is kept out of the atmosphere—must be taken into consideration when comparing the long-term climate impact of a tonne of sequestered carbon. If it is kept out of the atmosphere for 10 years, the impact will be 10 times greater than if it is only sequestered for 1 year.

    The four graphs below are based on ministry of forests’ yield curves for Douglas fir stands of various growing conditions (site index). The first illustration shows a typical yield curve used by the ministry to project expected growth in cubic metres per hectare. The exact numbers and units don’t really matter in this exercise; we are simply going to give you a sense of how the impact of carbon sequestered by forests that will be logged every 60 years compares with the impact of carbon sequestered in a forest that is left to grow for at least 300 years. So we start with a typical yield curve:

     

    2091174378_Douglasfiryield.thumb.jpg.2cf35f2a5a2e320a7cedd93129de625c.jpg

     

    The solid green area in the graph below illustrates the tonne-years that would be sequestered on a hectare of forest over 300 years where the site index is 30. This is what would happen if a hectare of newly planted Douglas fir was left to grow. It’s also a rough approximation of what happens naturally in areas that have low levels of natural disturbance, such as forest fires.

     

    923237591_Douglasfiryieldover300-yearperiod.thumb.jpg.b25299d932ab9ffd0152eb7d18026ca0.jpg

     

    The graph below illustrates the tonne-years of carbon that would be sequestered on that same hectare, but logged 5 times over those 300 years, with each cut 60 years apart.

    424832965_Douglasfiryieldoverfive60-yearperiods.thumb.jpg.b2a6de5d6b39903b60c6adf2aa7c9214.jpg

     

    The graph below compares the tonne-years of carbon sequestered over 300 years without logging and the tonne-years of carbon sequestered over 300 years with logging every 60 years.

    1066585292_Douglasfircomparison.thumb.jpg.cc1a53acfe226389fbf00a77b73cf904.jpg

     

    As mentioned above, logging every 60 years results in only about one-quarter of the tonne-years of carbon that would be sequestered by a given area of forest if it was left to grow. Over millions of hectares, this is a very large loss in carbon sequestration capacity, and a significant threat to climate stability. A caveat about this comparison: It assumes there would be no loss in soil productivity as a result of removing much of the biomass from the hectare of forest every 60 years. More likely, there would be a loss in site productivity and so the loss in carbon sequestration capacity would likely be greater than 80 percent.

    This same degree of loss occurs over the full range of site index.

    One argument offered by the logging industry to temper this loss is the idea that manufactured wood products would result in the safe storage of carbon. But BC ministry of forests’ own research, as illustrated by the graph below, has shown that only 20 percent of the carbon “stored” in manufactured forest products is still “stored” after 100 years. The rest has been released to the atmosphere.

     

     

    CarbonStoredinUseOver100-yearperiod.thumb.jpg.5d09a7c05f5530bbcadf2b753c999039.jpg

     

    In the future, if trees are harvested at a much younger age than in the past, as is planned, a much smaller volume of the tree will be suitable for long-lived products and a greater volume will be used for ephemeral uses such as wood pellets for burning in thermal electricity generating plants. 

    The Discovery Islands Forest Conservation Project is tracking the volume of logging on the islands and its impact on the carbon sequestration capacity of island forests.

    Now lets consider the second way that the concentration of carbon in the atmosphere is increased by logging.

    When forests are logged, not only is there a sudden halt to carbon sequestration, but almost all the carbon that was stored in the biomass of that forest begins to be released to the atmosphere. Although this decomposition occurs over an extended period of time, by international convention the date on which emissions are considered to have been released is on the date the forest was logged.

    The image below illustrates the problem in a nutshell. These piles of wasted biomass, created by TimberWest on Quadra Island, were burned soon after this photo was taken. If the piles had been left unburned, they would have constituted an even higher fire hazard than does the fuel-laden clearcut and plantation that exists there now.

     

    Increasedcarbonemissions.2.jpg.74fbd58dbd4c7e1ea5b79c84d5c5fcf9.jpg

    Logging slash piles on TimberWest-Mosaic clearcut on Quadra Island in 2020. These piles were later burned.

     

    As mentioned above, the shorter the period of time between successive cuts, the smaller the trees and the greater the percentage of each tree that is wasted because it is too small and uneconomic to be removed from the clearcut and processed into something other than short-lived pellets.

    The Discovery Islands Forest Conservation Project is tracking the volume of forest logged on publicly-owned land on the Discovery Islands each year and is calculating the forest carbon emissions and loss of carbon sequestration associated with that logging. We are using the methodology developed by the Evergreen Alliance.


    User Feedback

    Recommended Comments

    Anthony Britneff

    Posted

    The UBC forestry faculty needs to go back to school on carbon sequestration for promulgating bull like this: 

    As long as intensive silviculture is practised in forest management, the carbon sequestration of younger working forests can be more productive than mature forests as a carbon sink" . . . If you’re committed to more intensive management, I can double the carbon stock on that forest,” . . . “The working forest is a better carbon sink in general.” 

    Source:  BIV 10 November 2022, "Climate smart forestry" at https://biv.com/article/2022/11/climate-smart-forestr

    Fred Marshall

    Posted

    What is also painfully obvious is that conducting harvesting and road construction 5 times over the next 300 years creates 5 times as much Carbon as does doing this once!   A fact that the forest industry and compatriots (i.e. some UBC faculty!) studiously avoid mentioning.  These numbers need to be added to the graph.
     
    I have spent a lot of time travelling through Interfor's TFL 8 and associated operating areas in the Boundary TSA and, over their ownership period of the last 12-15 years of the Boundary forests, they have continually created extensive and very large clearcuts and built thousands of kilometers of roads and via their operations have significantly degraded these  (OUR) forests.  Over this time they have created many NSR areas and, as per a recent FREP report, degraded the south block---comprising ~ 1/2 of their TFL-8-- so that the majority of the riparian areas situated therein are NOT PROPERLY FUNCTIONING!  
     
    The following summary statement from Section   5.1.1 Riparian/stream condition: not properly functioning   of this report states that:
        
    "The Boundary Creek watershed was the largest in this
    study, with 21 sub-catchments sampled within the
    assessment polygon. Overall, the entire watershed was
    ranked as not properly functioning for the riparian/
    stream assessment, mainly because of the very high
    levels of human-caused riparian disturbance across the
    watershed (Table 6). Forestry was identified as the main
    development activity upstream in all but one of the sub
    catchments, where agriculture was dominant, and there
    are more than 100 road crossings over streams in the
    watershed. The total proportion of the watershed affected
    by development was estimated by the assessors at 56%
    using aerial imagery and spatial layers."
     
    In Diane Nicholl's recent TSR AAC Determination for this TFL she made absolutely no allowances for:
    • The degraded condition of these riparian areas as indicated by the FREP report.
    •  The increased areas of NSR
    •  Climate change and---
    • Cumulative Effects on the landscape --even though a comprehensive CE analysis report of the entire Boundary TSA was recently been completed.
    And, as usual, she included her pathetically impractical statement that it would be inappropriate for her to use either common sense or logic to apply the precautionary principle and reduce the AAC to a more sensible, safer and sustainable level.  And this even though the Boundary area experienced a catastrophic flood in 2018 causing hundreds of millions of dollars worth of damage and leaving hundreds of very distraught homeowners whose homes have since been confiscated by the City of Grand Forks with some compensation for such taking.  
     
    And yet the AAC was maintained at it's past level and hence Clearcutting continues unabated across the landscape thus ever increasing the risk of more watershed damage and devastating floods.  In spite of all the dikes that are being built around the city of Grand Forks it may still incur future flood damage.
     
    Several years ago large sums of money were spent doing "Watershed Restoration Work" in the Boundary area to address riparian degradation caused mainly by logging and road building.  Much of this money was used to create in-river and in-stream rock and log structures to deflect water away from eroding banks.    Now--- many of these structures have fallen apart and are the cause of ever more bank erosion.    See attached pictures of three log structure deteriorating in the Kettle River.  The road located to the right of the pictures has since been washed away and is no longer accessible.   Some entity has dumped several loads on the edge of the road in the hopes that---as the bank erodes--these rocks will fall into the river and ---hopefully stop the erosion.  Fat to no chance of this happening.   The next road in the path of river is the main highway between Kelowna and Rock creek--Hwy 33.  We'll see what happens over the next few years.
     
    The picture of the degraded creek depicts a typical stream reach that is downstream of TFL-8!
     
    Unfortunately, the above scenarios are very sad examples of what is happening across BC---with such happenings aided and abetted and inherently supported by the Chief Forester of the day who continually approves AACs that are unsustainable and pose an ongoing threat to the future well-being of BC.   We depend on our forested landscapes for virtually every facet of ecosystem services that these ---OUR---forests provide.  Without our healthy, properly functioning forests we are doomed to experience ever more unnatural disasters occurring everywhere across BC.


    Join the conversation

    You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.

    Guest
    Add a comment...

    ×   Pasted as rich text.   Paste as plain text instead

      Only 75 emoji are allowed.

    ×   Your link has been automatically embedded.   Display as a link instead

    ×   Your previous content has been restored.   Clear editor

    ×   You cannot paste images directly. Upload or insert images from URL.


×
×
  • Create New...