1. O3 Makes free
Consultants
NGO ECO CENTER “CHARLES DARWIN”
BOSNIA & HERZEGOVINA and
C R O A T I A
P.O.Box 34 NOVI VINODOLSKI 51250
TOWARDS A BETTER UNDERSTANDING OF THE ROLE OF BOREAL (Taiga) FORESTS IN
BIOSPHERE C (Carbon) FLUXES AND MECHANISMS by Nijaz Deleut, FCD
Key messages:
Forest provides multiple goods and services, including wood supply, carbon
accumulation, ecosystems services, water purification, protection against
natural hazards and recreational services.
Forests in Europe have been accumulating carbon (C) at a rate of more than 100
million tonnes (Mt C) per year from 1990 to 2010.
Climate change is expected to have major impacts on forest ecosystem. Rising
atmospheric CO2 concentration, higher temperatures and changes in precipitation
are likely to have significant effects on the vegetation period, growth, health
and distribution of trees as well as on forest ecosystems, and thus on the goods
and services provided by forests.
Climate change may also enhance the frequency of favorable conditions for forest
fires extending the fire seasons in both time and space.
An increase in storms, droughts and heat waves can lead to higher rates of tree
mortality, and make forests more susceptible to secondary damages, such as
insect and fungal infestations.
I'll start with “Europe in 2050” a survivor's guide to climate change – a new
report gives a clear picture of how global warming is affecting Europe (see:
www.newscientist.com/data/images/archive/2893/28934601.jpg ), so how must
countries adopt to survive. Europe is now in a race against the climate. With
little hope of a global deal to cut greenhouse gas emission, temperatures rises
of 3 or 4 Celsius above preindustrial levels are likely before 2100. That means
countries have just decades to prepare.
Next, the UNEP (United Nations Environment Programme) released report (New
Scientist, 28th November, 2012., “Arctic permafrost is melting faster than
predicted”; article by Michael Slezak; see on www.newscientist.com ), reviewing
the most up-to-date research on Arctic permafrost (frozen soil that covers
nearly a quarter of the northern hemisphere and traps vast amount of carbon).
It claims temperature projections due in 2014 from the IPCC (International Panel
on Climate Change) does take into account the positive feedback cycle of
permafrost melting and releasing greenhouse gases, i.e. that “long-scale thawing
of the permafrost may already have started.”
It calls on governments; i.e. Siberia, Russia; Alaska, U.S; Canada, Norway,
Sweden and Finland (see: www.nrdc.org/land/forests/boreal/images/map.gif ) to
monitor permafrost in greater detail and urges communities in permafrost areas
to develop plans for managing, and any damage to infrastructure caused by the
frozen soil melting.

2. Also, the NASA team (researchers doing groundbreaking research using a plane
flying just 150 meters above the ground) measuring levels of both carbon dioxide
and methane (a greenhouse gas that is about 25 times more powerful than carbon
dioxide over 100 years) above Arctic, stated:
“The vegetation, the relative heights of the land and water table – these so
called “microtopographic” variabilities really seen to be driving what's going
on in terms of release of carbon dioxide and methane into the atmosphere – are
the factors driving the release of gases found on these small scales.”
One big question is how much of the 1700 billion tonnes of carbon locked in the
permafrost as frozen organic matter will be realized as methane (if it gets
warmer and wetter), and how much as carbon dioxide (if it gets warmer and drier)
if there is a thaw?
Yude Pan.et al. “A Long and Persistent Carbon Sink in the World's Forests”,
SCIENCE 333, 988 (2011), scientific research stated that the terrestrial C
(Carbon) sink (a natural or artificial reservoir that accumulates and stores
some carbon-containing chemical compound for an indefinite period) has been
large in recent decades, but its size and location remain uncertain, using
forest inventory data and long-term ecosystem carbon studies, and estimated a
total forest sink of carbon per year, globally from 1990 to 2007.
Conclusion is that boreal (taiga) forests carbon sinks by regions, biomass, and
pools.
Forest have an important role in the global carbon cycle and are valued globally
for services they provide to society. Analysis advanced by including
comprehensive carbon pools of the forest sector (dead wood, harvested wood
products, living biomass, litter, and soil) and report past trends and changes
in carbon stocks across countries, regions, and continents representing boreal
(taiga), temperate, and tropical forest;
see:www.marietta.edu/~biol/biomes/boreal.htm
Also, COP18 (UNCC negotiations in Doha, Qatar, November, 2012) goal to limit
greenhouse gases (for post Kyoto era), require an understanding of the current
and potential future role of boreal (taiga) forest carbon emissions and
sequestration in both managed and unmanaged forests. While negotiations are
sticking to the goal of limiting global warming to 2 degrees C, even
climatologists admit that the project failed. Even if President Barack Obama
unexpectedly pushed emission reduction legislation through Congress, the
resulting treaty would still have to be ratified, and that would take too much
time.
Carbon outcomes structure, deforestation, reforestation, and afforestation, for
boreal (taiga) forests, had a consistent average sink, with only 20% in biomass,
and 60% in soil.
However, the overall stability of the boreal (taiga) forest carbon sink is the
net result of contrasting carbon dynamics in different boreal (taiga) countries
and regions associated with natural disturbances and forest management. I.e.
Asian Russia (Siberia) had the largest boreal (taiga) sink. Again, in contrast,
there has a notable sink increase of 35% in European Russia, attributed to
several factors:
-increased areas of forests after agricultural abandonment,
-reduced harvesting, and
-changes of forest age structure to more productive stages, particularly for
the deciduous forests.
Also, in contrast to the long increase of biomass sinks in European Russia and
northern Europe (i.e. Norway, Sweden, and Finland) the biomass carbon sink in
Canadian and U.S.A. (Alaska) managed forests was reduced by half between the two
periods, mostly due to the biomass loss from intensified wildfires and insect
outbreaks.
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3. On the other side, a net loss of soil carbon in norther Europe was attributed to
shifts of forest to non forest in same areas
(see:www.marietta.edu/~biol/biomes/images/taiga/taiga_500.jpg ).
Drought in all regions and warmer winters in boreal (taiga) regions reduce the
forest sink through suppressed gross primary production, increased tree
mortality, increased fires, and increased insect damage. Thus, prioritized
recommendations for improvements in regional forest
inventories to assess C density, uptake, and emissions for global-scale
aggregations included the following:
(i) Land monitoring should be greatly expanded in un-sampled regions of northern
boreal (taiga) forests.
(ii) Globally consistent remote sensing of land-cover change and forest-area is
required to combine the strengths of two observation systems: solid ground truth
of forest C densities from inventories and reliable forest areas from remote
sensing.
(iii) Improved methods and greater sampling intensity are needed to estimate
non-living C pools, including soil, litter, and dead wood.
(iv) Better data are required in most regions for estimating literal C transfers
in harvested wood products and rivers.
Nevertheless, C sinks in almost all forests across the world may suggest overall
favorable conditions for increasing stocks in forests and wood products. There
are extensive areas of relatively young forests with potential to continue
sequestering C in the future in the absence of accelerated natural disturbance,
climate variability, and land-use change.
Therefore, I pledge for a better understanding of the role of boreal (taiga)
forests in biosphere C fluxes and mechanisms responsible for forest C changes is
critical for CO2 growth, and guiding the design, and implementation of
mitigation policies.
A new study (report in Journal of Geophysical Research, January, 2013, co-author
Sarah Doherty, of the University of Washington) indicated shoot, known as black
carbon (BC), plays a far greater role in global warming (GW) than previously
believed (twice that made by the IPCC in 2007), and is second only to CO2 in the
amount of heat it traps in the atmosphere.
There is also convincing evidence from others that background GW formed a heat
wave in Western Russia in 2010 into an extreme event in which record
temperatures triggered massive forest and peat-bog fires that blanketed Moscow
in smog.
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4. Shoot is made up of tiny dark particle. When it rises from fires, it mixes with
dust, sulphates, and other materials rising from the ground. As it ascends
through the atmosphere, it can drift into clouds mixing with the water droplets.
Rain and snow then wash out the BC particles and bring them back the Earth.
BC rises from the chimneys of mansions and from simple hut stoves, forest fires
and the tail pipes of diesel-fueled trucks, from bricks kilns and ocean liners
and gas flares, thus every day, from every occupied continent, a curtain of
shoot rises into the sky.
So, reducing shoot may be an effective way to slow down the planet's warming.
It's even more attractive because BC washes quickly out of the atmosphere, and
so reducing soot emission would lead to a fast fall in the concentration of BC
in the atmosphere.
James Hansen of the Goddard Institute for Space Studies has been arguing for
such a strategy for over decade. But the new study reveals a paradox in reducing
shoot to fight global warming (GW). If tomorrow we could shut down every brick
kiln, every burning from field, and every other source of shoot, we would, on
balance, have no effect on GW whatsoever.
How can this be? Because when things burn, BC is not the only thing they
produce. A forest fire produces BC as well as organic carbon molecules. The
forest fire BC help to warm the planet, but the organic carbon creates a haze
that blocks sunlight, cooling the atmosphere. The two emission cancel each
other out.
“In the real world you can't just get rid of BC emissions, you get rid of other
things as well” said Sarah Doherty.
The European Union (EU) has a total forest area of approximately 177 million ha
(around 40% of the EU territory), of which 130 million ha are available for wood
supply (http://ec.europa.eu/agriculture/fore/index_en.htm )and the production of
non-wood goods and services (cork, resins, berries, mushroom, hunting for
example).
The forest based industries are a very important EU economic sector (woodworking
industries, pulp and paper, printing industries), with a production value of 365
billion EUR, and an added value of around 120 billion EUR created by more than 3
million jobs (COM(2008) 113 final).
Forest play a crucial role in the global carbon cycle and the fight against
climate change. The demand for wood, and for wood fuel in the context of
increasing renewable energy demand, is a strong stimulus for increasing forest
growth and productivity and for improving management practices more wood and
residues could be harvested and mobilized while demand for forest products is
growing for material and energy uses as a way to reduce carbon emissions by
substituting products that cause higher emissions.
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5. However, increased harvest reduces carbon sinks. There is a need for speeding up
production rates and developing forest raw materials with new properties. Forest
of the future will be increasingly dedicated to producing fibres, timber, energy
or customized needs, which will have considerable impacts on the provisioning of
a broad range of public goods.
Forests serve multiple and interrelated social, economic and environmental
functions. Besides providing jobs, income and raw material to industry, forests
contribute to soil fertility and prevent soil erosion, mostly by limiting runoff
and lowering wind speed. They also regulate and purify freshwater supplies, and
act as a water buffer, reducing flooding.
In addition, forests act as carbon sinks thus contributing to the mitigation of
climate change and as significant carbon stocks that are important to protect.
They conserve biodiversity, protect against landslides and avalanches, and
provide recreation, vibrant rural landscapes, and a wide range of commercial
non-wood products. An important goal is to mobilize more wood in appropriate
areas while safeguarding biodiversity and other public goods delivered by
forests.
At the end, Fred Pearce (11 February 2013, “Arctic sunshine cranks up threats
from Greenhouse gases”; see: “Thaw point” Image: Jenny E. Ross/Corbis; on
www.newscientist.com/article/dn23158-artic-suneshine-cranks-up ) concluded that
solar double whammy. Not only that sunlight melt Arctic ice, but it also spreed
up the conversion of frozen organic matter into CO2. The amount of CO2 in dead
vegetation preserved in the northern hemisphere is estimated to be twice what
the atmosphere holds as CO2.
Ms Rose Cory at the University of North Caroline at Chapel Hill and her
colleagues analyzed water from pounds forming on melting permafrost at 27 sites
across Arctic. They found that the amount of CO2 realized was 40% higher when
the waters was exposed to ultraviolet (UV) light than when kept dark. This is
because UV light, a component of sunlight, raises the respiration rate of soil
bacteria and fungi amplifying the amount of organic matter they break down and
the amount of CO2 released.
The thawing Arctic is emerging as a potentially major source of positive
feedback that could accelerate GW beyond existing projections.
“Our task now is to quantify how fast this previously frozen carbon may be
converted, so that modules can include the process”, Cory said.
REFERECES:
EEA (2012), Climate change, impacts and vulnerability in Europe 2012: An
indicator-based report, No 12/2012; www.eea.europa.eu
On 13 February 2012, the European Commission adopted the strategy “Innovating
for Sustainable Growth: A Bioeconomy for Europe” - Communication from the
European Commission to the European Parliament, the Council, the Economic and
Social Committee and the Committee of the Regions “Innovating for Sustainable
Growth: A Bioeconomy for Europe” and the “Commission Staff Working Document”,
Luxembourg Publications Office of the European Union, 2012.
research¨ eu results magazine No. 48/December 2015 – January 2016, Publications
Office of the European Union, Luxembourg, 2015
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6. ANNEX I
Based on NASA's Vegetation Index, this map shows areas where plant growth has
increased in green and blue areas where it has decreased in orange and red.
Green quite clearly wins.
Across the entire northern hemisphere, ice and snow are retreating in front of
and invading “green army” as warmer temperatures shrub lands.
A new analysis of satellite data collected since 1982 has revealed a rigorous
increase in vegetation growth between the 45th
parallel north and the Arctic
Ocean over the past 30 years.
But the global greening might be only temporary, with the future looking brown,
if temperatures continue to rise there could be a greater risk of fires, pest
infestations, and drought. See photo:
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7. ANNEX II
Three Rings Reveal Climate Histories,
Coordinated by IC3 in Spain, Funded under FP7-PEOPLE.
http://cordis.europa.eu/result/rcn/170026_en.html
An interdisciplinary EU-funded initiative has successfully addressed crucial
questions regarding climate change by analyzing different tree-ring parameters
and applying different statistical approaches.
The aim of the project TREE-RINGS & CLIMATE (Temporal instability of tree-
ring/climate relationships: Tree responses to climatic change and implications
for paleoclimate research) was to provide a greater understanding of the
relationship between tree rings and climate. This important issue has potential
implications for the global carbon cycle, forest growth patterns and climate
change reconstructions.
Project partners evaluated two areas of uncertainty over time found in Boreal
and Iberian forests, termed the divergence problem and climate stress strength.
New approaches were used to understand and attributed their causes and their
implications for climate research.
The first approach used a network of tree-ring chronologies to assess climate
change impacts on forests and assess their responses to future climate change
conditions. Approach two explored stable isotopes as a possible key to the
divergence problem. The third approach developed more reliable reconstructions
of past climates using tree-ring parameters (width, density and sable isotopes)
and non-tree-ring archives to reduce uncertainties in climate reconstructions.
Results showed that tree-ring analyses can provide a look back in time, from
several centuries to millennia, with a resolution at the annual scale.
Project partners analyzed different tree-ring parameters and applied different
statistical techniques to improve tree-ring models and growth model predictions.
TREE-RING & CLIMATE will advance scientific knowledge on the interactions
between the biosphere, ecosystems and human activities.
By studying interactions between climates and forests, researchers were able to
determine forest responses to a changing climate “signal” containing in tree
rings. The project therefore provided valuable expertise on tree growth and how
to reduce uncertainties in the reconstruction of past climates.
The project will help to quantify local impact of climate change in one of the
most sensitive regions of Europe (the Iberian Peninsula) and worldwide (Boreal
region), supporting further initiatives.
In addition, the work conducted on climate change processes and impacts on
natural resources will help to identify and assess key drivers and improve
understanding of their interactions.
In Novi Vinodolski, Croatia, 11th
March 2016
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