WISE RIVER, Mont. — The trees spanning many of the mountainsides of western Montana glow an earthy red, like a broadleaf forest at the beginning of autumn.
But these trees are not supposed to turn red. They are evergreens, falling victim to beetles that used to be controlled in part by bitterly cold winters. As the climate warms, scientists say, that control is no longer happening.
Across millions of acres, the pines of the northern and central Rockies are dying, just one among many types of forests that are showing signs of distress these days.
The devastation extends worldwide. The great euphorbia trees of southern Africa are succumbing to heat and water stress. So are the Atlas cedars of northern Algeria. Fires fed by hot, dry weather are killing enormous stretches of Siberian forest. Eucalyptus trees are succumbing on a large scale to a heat blast in Australia, and the Amazon recently suffered two “once a century” droughts just five years apart, killing many large trees.
Experts are scrambling to understand the situation, and to predict how serious it may become.
Scientists say the future habitability of the Earth might well depend on the answer. For, while a majority of the world’s people now live in cities, they depend more than ever on forests, in a way that few of them understand.
Scientists have figured out — with the precise numbers deduced only recently — that forests have been absorbing more than a quarter of the carbon dioxide that people are putting into the air by burning fossil fuels and other activities. It is an amount so large that trees are effectively absorbing the emissions from all the world’s cars and trucks.
Alaska Dispatch:
Want to save the planet? Plant a tree.
Or maybe a lot of them. Or maybe don’t cut down so many.
These are the implications of a new study, which found that the world’s forests play an unexpectedly large role in climate change, vacuuming up the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide (CO2) and storing the carbon in wood, according to research published online Thursday by the journal Science.
That, in turn, helps regulate CO2 concentrations in the atmosphere – and keeps the planet from overheating.
About one-quarter of the earth’s land surface is covered by forest. But while scientists and schoolchildren have long known that trees absorb carbon dioxide, no one was sure how significant their role was, overall. Oceans, the atmosphere, and other terrestrial ecosystems also absorb carbon.
So how much is due to forests? Forests are incredibly diverse across different regions – tropical, boreal, temperate – and different conditions: growing fast, being cut back, dying off, or being replanted. Researchers have struggled to get a complete picture of how much impact forests alone had on climate. Until now.
Earth’s forests, it turns out, play a dominant role in absorbing greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, acting like a giant sponge and soaking up on average about 8.8 billion tons of carbon dioxide each year, the new study led by the US Forest Service shows – or about one-third of fossil fuel emissions annually during the 1990-2007 study period. In the end, about 2.4 billion tons of solid carbon were locked away in wood fiber each year over that period – a surprise to scientists.
“The new information suggests forests alone account for the most significant terrestrial carbon sink, and that non-forest lands collectively cannot be considered a major carbon absorption sink,” said Yude Pan, a US Forest Service scientist and a lead author of the study, in a statement. That finding could have big implications for national forest policies worldwide, implying that as forests go, so too does the planet.
AAuuggghhh! Why can’t people see that it isn’t temperature or lack of precipitation (yet) that is killing trees, it is air pollution. I’m in California at the moment and all the eucalyptus here are dying off too. The aspen are dying off along with the pines in the west – and they don’t get the bark beetle! They call it SAD – Sudden Aspen Decline – and have no reason for it.
The maples are dying in New England, and the ash and oaks are dying everywhere too. Even coffee bushes on plantations in Central America are dying, as is the national tree of Costa Rica, the mimosa. Foresters blame insects, disease and fungus. But these are a naturally occurring part of the cycle of breaking down dead trees and returning them to the soil…when the trees become very old and go into a gradual senescence – as in, CENTURIES old. Now, young trees are succumbing to a host of attacks because their immune systems are shot, they are like people with AIDS.
In addition to causing internal physiological changes, such as decreased allocation of carbohydrates to the root system, leading to more toppling trees, ozone injures the stomates of needles and leaves so that they can’t photosynthesize, AND it eats away at protective layers, increasing the incidence of insect, disease and fungus.
As I pointed out in this post http://witsendnj.blogspot.com/2011/10/going-goinggone.html, the ecologist quoted in the article who said:
“A lot of ecologists like me are starting to think all these agents, like insects and fires, are just the proximate cause, and the real culprit is water stress caused by climate change…”
missed the fact that young trees being irrigated in nurseries and plants that live in water like lilies and lotus, and annuals from hot climates grown in pots being watered, have the EXACT SAME SYMPTOMS of injured foliage that big old trees growing in the ground have…ergo – it ain’t the lack of precipitation nor is it the temperature (though as climate change accelerates, it will be).
Meanwhile…WAKE UP! The ecosystem is collapsing because of tropospheric ozone.
So there ARE measurable changes in deciduous tree physiology due to seasonal changes (which are due to climate change)
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1365-2486.2006.01164.x/abstract
http://wwwp.dailyclimate.org/tdc-newsroom/maples/All-tapped-out
and I think it’s safe to say that trees in drought-stricken areas are suffering from lack of water.
I looked at the sources you cited in your blog post, and neither of them, so far as I could see, supported your claims.
Do you have any data to show that would back you up?
As it stands, your comment here and your blog post both remind me of fairly typical denier logic – comment about an “obvious cause”, link to your blog, talk more abou the cause, and link to un-related articles with the implication that they support you, when they really don’t.
Granted, I also see that from other brands of psuedoscience reporting, but it’s most common among the deniers.
Now, if you DO actually have a serious source to cite, I’ll look at it, and apologize, but in the meantime, you’ve given no actual evidence, and to be honest, you come across as desperately searching for the cause of a phenomenon that ALREADY has a known cause.
Actually, it is ozone that is already the well-known cause. It has been researched for decades and found to damage vegetation, even at ambient levels in remote areas far from precursors, and there are lists of links to research, articles, and reports at the top of the blog on two pages:
http://witsendnj.blogspot.com/p/basic-premise.html and
http://witsendnj.blogspot.com/p/more-links-to-research.html
You might start with this college course syllabus, scroll down to the section on the NCLAN (National Crop Loss Assessment Network) and “effects on ecosystems”
http://people.oregonstate.edu/~muirp/ozeffect.htm
You might also be interested in the EPA Science Advisory Board’s Report issued in August, about reactive Nitrogen, (described by one scientist as “…the worst environmental disaster you’ve never heard of.”) beginning with the chart on p. ES2, which attributes “Forest Decline…decreased timber growth, increased susceptibility to diseases and pests” to ozone and acid deposition, here:
http://yosemite.epa.gov/sab/sabproduct.nsf/WebReportsLastMonthBOARD/67057225CC780623852578F10059533D/$File/EPA-SAB-11-013-unsigned.pdf
It is the scientists in the NYT article who are missing the trees for the forests – climate change-induced higher temperatures and decreased precipitation DOES NOT adequately account for all the evidence of tree damage, because trees that are being irrigated in nurseries look no better than trees in the wild.
By the way, for a very long time, I thought it was climate change causing trees to die. I couldn’t think of what possible mechanism could be so broad and universal to explain such widespread decline. It wasn’t until I realized that annuals being watered in pots, and water plants exhibit precisely the same symptoms that I took the role of pollution seriously.
However, since I did for over a year think it was climate change, I spent that time reading every book and blog I could find on the topic. I am not a denier, in fact, I am in that camp that believes that the impacts of climate change are already and will be far, far worse and far, far faster than scientific models have been predicting, because that don’t include amplifying feedback and synergistic effects. I’m quite sure the human race is, if not completely doomed, certainly industrial civilization is. I would just like to slow it down. And if we lose the carbon sink of trees through pollution, and food crops, the demise will be considerably hastened.
Am I desperate? Do I have three children?
My bad – I did find the Crabtree quote in the article, so that’s there (http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/01/science/earth/01forest.html?pagewanted=5&%2359&_r=2&%2359;pagewanted=5)
The request for evidence beyond your say-so remains though.
There is an apparent discrepancy in the numbers given by the study. Towards the end of this post, you note that trees are soaking up about 8.8 billion tons of CO2 per year. A few sentences later, you mention 2.4 billion tons of solid carbon per year. I’m guessing that the discrepancy is due to one of the following:
1. CO2 has an atomic weight of 44, carbon alone is only 12, and you’re differentiating CO2 from carbon. 2.4 billion tons of carbon in trees would consume the equivalent of 8.8 billion tons of CO2.
2. 8.8 billion tons is the gross amount absorbed each year, 2,4 billion tons is the net amount.
Would you know which one of the two he meant?
I own 40 acres of forestland in Oregon, which has a sorry history of fire, logging, and lack of reforestation. I’ve been steadily reforesting the place, but it’s a slow business. I used to get seedlings from the Oregon State Nursery for about $1 apiece, but then the commercial nurseries complained about the competition and the state closed the state nursery. Commercial nurseries immediately jacked the price of conifer seedlings up to about $5 apiece. When you’re planting 100 each winter, that adds up. So I switched to replanting volunteers that sprout around my land. Each year I dig up 30 to 50 seedlings in crowded areas and replant them where they’re needed. It’s slow work — hauling a seedling in its 5-pound mass of root dirt on the end of the shovel from one place to another a few hundred yards away — without disturbing the roots — is good exercise. But the real work starts in the spring after they’re planted. That first spring/summer, their roots aren’t well enough established to keep them alive through the hot summer, so I water each and every tree about once every two weeks. Of course, this is out in the middle of the forest, and there are no water taps nearby, so I have to haul hundreds of feet of hose out to the general area. All in all, it’s a lot of work, but now some of my older trees are getting bigger, and it’s a good feeling seeing a lot of trees growing up. Some of my trees are now 15 feet high.
Deforestation has an impact of 30% to climate change. Unfortunately part of the spiral 🙁
So think twice about imported “bio” fuels when rainforest is cut down for oil palms.
At the end of the day, countries have to learn to produce their renewable energy themselves, on their own home ground. US America has failed such a self sufficient energy policy since the 1970s (why do you think all these wars in the middle east and Afghanistan are happening?). Good to see that Texas is (after China) the biggest investor in (and producer of) wind energy. Also, the US have a huge capacity for solar energy. Last but not least, I believe that bio fuels from algae have the potential to replace fossil fuels – 100% carbon neutral! – in a very short period of time 😉
=> Who’s Bankrolling the Climate-Change Deniers? (Time Magazine, October 4, 2011)
“So would it make a difference if the conservative denial machine were to collapse tomorrow? Sadly, I’m not sure. Even in places like Western Europe, where belief in climate science tends to be much stronger, it’s hard to build support for the actual steps to reduce carbon emissions. Human beings have a hard time dealing not just with pain, but also with long-term problems, especially ones that don’t necessarily show immediate effects. Whether it’s planning for retirement or losing weight, we find it too easy to disregard very clear science — and disregard our long-term health — in order to satiate our immediate desires. There’s no excuse for the sort of half-fictions and outright lies that too often make up the climate-change-denial machine, but it’s human psychology — as much as politics — that’s preventing us from dealing with one of the greatest threats the species faces. The most powerful denial machine of all may be the one inside our heads.”
What about the “Country of the Unlimited Opportunities”? Forgotten about? Teabagging? Backwards? Business as usual? Koch suckers?
No. There is another way. History has just begun again 😉
Just a quick comment on the video. Why is it called ‘global cooling ad’? And the conclusion that trees cool the planet is a gross over simplification. A tree provides a little shade and mitigates CO2 concentrations in the short term, and reforestation is worthwhile but it’s a multi-faceted problem – there is no single solution , not even trees. Imho this video thus plays down the problem of global warming .
Anyhow that’s my two cents worth – shoot me down in flames .
don’t understand the title.
I like the view of rural india, and the reminder that third world people get the value of trees, not just for climate, but for a variety of reasons.
It is not difficult to plant forests. http://www.greenhealth.org.uk/DesertRose.htm