Trees In USA Hold Equivalent of 20 Years Worth Of Carbon Emissions
by John Laumer, Philadelphia on 04.11.08
One more reason to love trees. Big ones especially. And, one more reason not to let US forest products industry lobbyists dominate public policy making.
A report released today by The Wilderness Society emphasizes the enormous carbon reserves held by forests in the contiguous states - roughly equivalent to more than 20 years of current United States greenhouse gas emissions from industrial and other sources. Across the U.S., public and protected forests generally store the most carbon. The analysis also cautions that existing carbon measurement tools have significant limitations due to gaps in the underlying data: old growth forests, in particular, may be undervalued.The executive summary of "Measuring Forest Carbon: Strengths and Weaknesses of Available Tools" is available here, and the full report may be downloaded as a pdf file here.
Via::The Wilderness Society. "Analysis Shows American Forests Contain Enormous Carbon Reserves, But Available Measuring Tools Reflect Gaps in Underlying Data" Image credit::The Wilderness Society, Full Report
This is another plus for choosing wood products over other building materials. With the use of wood products, carbon is not only collected by our forests, but locked into our homes, chairs, etc. Here's a fairly easy diagram put out by the Oregon Forest Resources Institute:
http://www.oregonforests.org/media/pdf/Carbon_Poster.pdf
A note to the author's comment about letting the forest industry dominate public policy: Here in Oregon we face greater dangers to our forest values due to conversion and wildfires, than we do from industrial forestlands. 2nd and 3rd growth forests on a 60 year old rotation (which are required by law to replant) are a heck of a lot better at storing carbon than a Walmart parking lot or a 50,000 acre fire.
Here's another report put together by a great collection of scientists on the topic:
http://www.oregonforests.org/media/pdf/CarbnExecSum.pdf
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