Old growth temperate forests are an important global carbon sink, soaking up CO₂ at much higher rates than previously thought.The dogma for many decades has been that once forests become mature, they have such a large volume of non-green respiring (and CO₂ releasing) tissue that they do not accumulate carbon.As a result, old growth forests have been left out of discussions of carbon storage and sequestration.

Sebastiaan Luyssaert of the University of Antwerp, Belgium and his colleagues have shown that in forests from 15 to 800 years old, the net carbon balance, including soils, is positive.  That means that forests accumulate carbon regardless of age. 

Luyssaert found that boreal and temperate forests of the northern hemisphere sequester about 1.3 gigatonnes of carbon per year.  Disturbance of these forests would probably result in net release of CO₂.

This research, if borne out by further studies, should provide strong motivation for forests of all ages to be included in carbon sequestration schemes. That means that owners of forests should be able to get income through the sale of carbon credits, and these owners will have an incentive for forest protection and conservation.

Links:
Lysseart et al in Nature (sub. required)

Mongabay article on old growth

A private company, GreenTrees, is creating long-term contracts with landowners in the Lower Mississippi River Alluvial Valley, including Western Kentucky, to plant forests of cottonwood and other hardwoods. The purpose of the project is to create value through a combination of biomass production for industry and carbon sequestration opportunities. Carbon sequestration will create income streams through trading in carbon cap and trade markets.

In exchange for leasing the land to GreenTrees, landowners receive up-front payments, timber harvest income, recreational income, carbon-based income, and appreciating property values, as well as federal and state conservation incentives and payments.  Landowners can engage in these kinds of activities on their own, but they can’t tap into the up-front income offered by GreenTrees.

The Lower Mississippi River Alluvial Valley was a richly forested region until the 20th century, when bottom-land farming of soybeans cleared vast areas of land.  These lands are in the long run more valuable for carbon storage and watershed protection than crop production.

Stay tuned for more information on this interesting development.

Green-Trees.com

Cross posted at Sustainable Kentucky and Tree Trends.

Andrew Revkin  at Dot Earth has a nice article about the proposal by Al Gore and Wangari Maathai to include forest preservation in carbon-trading markets designed to curb greenhouse gas emissions.  Gore and Maathai, both Nobel Peace Prize laureates for their conservation work, are promoting the work of the Avoided Deforestation Partners.

Tropical forest conversion to other uses currently accounts for about 20% of the world’s carbon budget.  In the Kyoto Protocols, the first plan to reduce world carbon emissions, forests received little attention, mainly because of opposition from environmental groups like the World Wildlife Fund and Greenpeace.  These organizations feared that counting tropical forests in carbon credit schemes might take pressure off major greenhouse gas (GHG) producers to reduce their own emissions. There was also concern that carbon credits extended to forest plantations might promote clearing of native forests. WWF has backed off that original position and now acknowledges that carbon credit trading could help conserve tropical forests.

Creating a significant dollar value for keeping tropical forests intact may provide governments and land owners with sufficient incentive to overcome the current incentives to clear tropical forests.  These incentives include profits from illegal logging and the high price for palm oil. Oil palm plantations have replaced large areas of lowland tropical forest throughout Southeast Asia, and the exploding biofuels market is putting market pressure on palm oil producers to expand their operations. Lowland forests, especially the kerangas (peat and heath forests) are critically threatened resources, store vast amounts of carbon and become major carbon sinks when converted to oil palm or other uses.

The challenge in placing dollar values on carbon storage in tropical forests, and paying for tropical forest conservation, is ensuring that the money gets to local people and that corruption can be overcome.  Malaysia and Indonesia have strong forest conservation laws on the books, but they are unenforceable due to corruption, with money flowing from forestry and oil palm interests to local and national government officials.  There has to be sufficient income to national governments from carbon trading credits to overcome the economic incentives that lead to corruption.  If money flows only to national governments and corporate interests, and does not benefit local people, any scheme will fail.

The solution to these problems is the same as the solution to the problems of sustainable forestry: reputable third-party certification.  Third party verifiers can produce management plans and provide evidence to carbon credit buyers so that the system can be trusted.

Pervasive corruption throughout the tropical countries that could most benefit from carbon credit purchases will be difficult to overcome, especially in countries like Indonesia with a weak central government and widespread poverty.

I took the photographs below in 1984 in West Kalimantan, Indonesia, showing the vast Kerangas (peat swamp and heath forest) of lowland Borneo in 1984. Most of this forest is now gone. Illegal logging remains rampant.  More pictures are at my photography site.

Links:

Two Nobelists Call for Forest Carbon Market – Dot Earth Blog – NYTimes.com

Avoided Forest Partners

Borneo Forests at Mongabay

Research by Peter Curtis (Ohio State University) and colleagues shows that northern Michigan forests can store an average of 0.65 tons C per acre per year. This rate of storage is higher than earlier estimates such as those used to develop the Kyoto Protocol, and is consistent with other recent studies that show that temperate forests are more efficient carbon sinks than previously thought.

The use of forests as purchasable carbon offsets will become more attractive as we learn more about how much carbon forests can store. However, there is so much variation in the factors that influence carbon storage in forests that prolonged, broad research like that discussed in this article will be needed at many more locations.

Links:

Press release: Scientists Point To Forests For Carbon Storage Solutions

Research Paper:

Christopher M. Gough, Christoph S. Vogel, Hans Peter Schmid, and Peter S. Curtis. Controls on Annual Forest Carbon Storage: Lessons from the Past and Predictions for the Future. 2008. Bioscience 58(7): 609-622.

Cross posted at Sustainable Kentucky/Green Kentucky