ACTIVE FOREST MANAGEMENT
CAN REDUCE GREENHOUSE GAS EMISSION
By Robert F. Powers, Ph.D.
If
Californians were truly concerned about reducing greenhouse gas emissions
they’d take a long, hard look at the state’s forests and forestry regulations.
Wildfires
account for one-fifth of global carbon dioxide emissions, and California
contributes more than its share. According to recent findings, one week of
Southern California wildfires in October 2007 spewed emissions equal to half of
the state’s coal-fired power plants operating for a year. Clearly we would benefit
from reducing the amount of forest carbon that goes up in smoke.
There
is a firm and growing body of science that shows that active forest management
can lower the threat and severity of wildfire and reduce the amount of forest
carbon returned to the atmosphere. Such forest management provides jobs, a
renewable clean-energy source, and even some budget relief while reducing greenhouse
gas emissions.
But
most Californians live in cities, far removed from forests now overcrowded with
stressed trees and choked with unprecedented fuels. Apart from vacations and fire-season
newscasts, most urbanites rarely give forestlands a second thought.
Yet
they vote in far greater numbers than those who live among forests. Therefore,
urban voters largely control the forests’ destiny.
Forest health degraded
Following
nearly a century of wildfire suppression, recent forestry policies have backed
away from active management on many public lands. Five times more trees per
acre often stand in Sierra Nevada forests than during the Gold Rush, and what
seems a good thing is not. Overcrowding leads to stressed trees. Beetle infestations have decimated nearly 2
million acres, and high-intensity wildfire is on the rise. Severe wildfires carry
greater environmental consequence than low-intensity fire, spew more greenhouse
gases skyward and leave moonscapes in their wake.
Carbon
should give Californians cause to replace well-meant but failed attempts at forest
preservation with scientifically guided forest conservation.
Forests
are tremendous carbon sinks, second only to oceans as Earth’s largest
repositories of atmospheric carbon. As forests grow, trees and plants absorb
carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, release oxygen, and store carbon in roots,
branches, needles, leaves and soils.
Younger
forests, because they grow faster than older forests, excel at removing carbon
from the air. Older forests may hold vast carbon reserves dating from the Civil
War, but they don’t scrub much carbon from today’s air. They act like a
stagnant carbon “bank account,” holding a steady amount but with little coming
in.
Active
management can keep forests growing rapidly so they remove carbon efficiently. Thinning the understory to remove undergrowth
and ladder fuels that can carry low-level ground fires into tree crowns can help
contain wildfires and protect carbon in stored trees. Crown fires release
carbon in huge pulses and burn so fiercely that they cannot be suppressed.
Wildfire
burns more than 500,000 California acres on average annually, and between 2001 and
2008, released the equivalent emissions of 30 million cars on the road for a
year. Driven by fuels allowed to accumulate during 100 years of fire
suppression, wildfire is increasingly severe. California has experienced three
of its worst fire seasons on record in the past seven years and endured
increases in severe wildfire of more than 300 percent in 2007 and 2008,
compared to the previous five-year average. More than 8 million acres and 3
million homes stand at high risk.
Californians
spend more than $1 billion annually to fight wildfire and too often firefighter
lives are lost. Yet Californians spend next to nothing to treat fuels and the
state’s regulatory environment offers no incentive to invest in the sustainable
forestry that could reduce emissions, firefighting costs and fire-related losses.
Long-term benefits from
immediate action
Research
shows that active forest management provides preventative medicine. Thinning
forests can reduce wildfire severity by up to 60 percent and remove up to 400
percent more carbon from the air than leaving forests alone. The same active management
can enhance biodiversity, create jobs more efficiently than any other sector
and help offset emissions from fossil fuels by utilizing forest residues to
generate electricity.
Californians
now and in the future would benefit from forest management policies that reduce
the risk of wildfire and their emissions.
Instead,
California’s forestry infrastructure is in decline. Regulations on private
lands have gotten so complex that taxpayer costs to review and enforce
regulations more than doubled between 1997 and 2007, and costs to California
forestry companies are often 10 times greater than those of forestry companies
in neighboring states. More than 40 percent of the state’s sawmills have closed
this decade.
On
public lands, the Forest Service is hamstrung by appeals and litigation that
constantly drain resources. The Forest Service wins the majority of lawsuits
filed against it, but the process diverts funds and delays or displaces action
on the ground. Meanwhile, forest stress
builds and fuels accumulate.
Severe
wildfire leads to greater emissions and higher firefighting costs. A glimpse of
that future surely makes now the time to encourage long-term investment in forestry
and create a better environment for our forests and California’s future.
Robert F. Powers, Ph.D. recently retired from
more than 40 years of soil-site research with the USDA Forest Service. He has been published in more than 150
scientific and professional publications.