Reforestation and Carbon Sequestration

Comment

Comment by Whetstone_Willy on March 10, 2010 at 5:15pm

It's OK Vinalhaven, Highland, Mars Hill and everywhere else. Ther is noTHING to worry about.

Comment by Joanne Moore on March 10, 2010 at 4:16pm

Good for Vermont! Of COURSE the ridgelines are rare and irreplaceable natural areas that should be protected. Our whole state is rare and irreplaceable for that matter. But no! We have been invaded (there she goes again!) by a band of alien THUGS intent on destroying all our natural beauty for their personal gain!

Please keep Mr. Turdinacci away from the little doggies! He would probably suck them up much like John Carpenter's "THE THING".

Comment by Long Islander on March 10, 2010 at 3:52pm

A new potential roadblock has been raised to a commercial wind farm that developers want to build in Ira and Poultney.

The Vermont Fish and Wildlife Department says the ridgelines being considered for the project are rare and irreplaceable natural areas that should be protected.

More at - http://vpr.net/news_detail/87435/

Maine Fish & Wildlife has voiced complaints but Governor Turbinacci ignores them. There are reportedly many at Maine Fish & Wildife who call the turbines "lethal infrastructure". Only nine more months before lameduck Governor Turbinacci becomes simply Mr. Turbinacci. And he is already growing a crooked bill that is as much duck-like as it is Pinnochioesque.

Can we pass an expedited emergency law that prohibits him from holding any public office in Maine in the future that is higher than Dog Catcher?

Comment by Long Islander on March 10, 2010 at 3:40pm

Joanne - For what it's worth, here are some stats on % forest cover by nation from the UN.

http://www.fao.org/DOCREP/005/Y7581E/y7581e16.htm#TopOfPage

According to them, the % of land area that is forest is:

- 29.6% of the world
- 24.7% of the U.S.

And we know Maine is 90%.

The U.S. has the Great Plains and desert areas, which I'm sure perform important roles in the big scheme. But let's realize what we have going for us here in forested and freshwater rich Maine and recognize the near 2,000 turbines of Baldacci are not playing in the same sequestration league as our forests. If practical (and desired), a tiny bit of thoughtful fine tuning in our forestry and wood use practices over time could enhance their sequestration and storage by an amount that would dwarf anything done by industrialization of our beautiful state with towering turbines and transmission.

Comment by Joanne Moore on March 10, 2010 at 3:20pm

I thought the United States didn't sign the Kyoto Protocol. Why then are we being flim-flamed into destroying our forests with the construction of industrial wind plantations that do not give us the carbon sequestration of an existing forest? Why, for instance can't Maine count our forest as our share in reducing CO2? Why do we have to destroy the village in order to save it? This is senseless. Especially if we are not a signatory to Kyoto in the first place. What am I missing here? Are trees and plenty of water less valuable than wind turbines? I don't think so. Not for long term sustainability.

Comment by Long Islander on March 10, 2010 at 3:05pm

Frank - this is great. I have made a note to look up the iTREE software suite you reference. I totally agree that forests have a myriad of benefits that go beyond CO2 removal. When I first started managing a small woodlot that I bought about 20 years ago, I read a small book called "Woodlot Primer" by Richard M. Brett. It had been recommended to me by a very wise friend of mine who had been practicing sustainable forestry for some time. That book said many of the same things you are saying about how woodlots and forests play so many important roles. One thought that really stuck was about their role with respect to water. "The most important thing woodlots do for us is provide pure water, and provide it in benign amounts...without woodlots -- or forests -- flood and drought wood make much of the earth uninhabitable".
It also reminds me of an excellent article I read in the NY Times last December by Bernd Heinrich called "Clear-Cutting the Truth About Trees". http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/20/opinion/20heinrich.html?pagewante...

Some select excerpts from the Bernd Heinrich piece (although the whole article from this great author is recommended):

"Biofuels are the indirect use of solar energy packaged into plants by the best solar-panel technology that has ever been invented, and it is far easier to grow green power than to build nuclear plants, dam our waterways and put windmills on our scenic mountaintops."

"Contrary to what you might hear from energy companies and environmentally conscious celebrities, offsets don’t magically make carbon emissions disappear. Worse, relying on them to stem global warming may devastate our vital forest ecosystems".

"In fact, most of the problems with the system can be traced back to the Kyoto Protocol, which was adopted in 1997. After much political wrangling, the Kyoto delegates decided that there would be no carbon-reduction credits for saving existing forests. Since planting new trees does get one credits, Kyoto actually created a rationale for clear-cutting old growth".

"This is horrifying. The world’s forests are a key to our survival, and that of millions of other species. Not only are they critical to providing us with building material, paper, food, recreation and oxygen, they also ground us spiritually and connect us to our primal past. Never before in earth’s history have our forests been under such attack. And the global-warming folks at Copenhagen seem oblivious, buying into the corporate view of forests as an exploitable resource".

"To preserve something it first has to be valued, and the most effective means of valuing it is to have a practical use for it. If the discussions in Copenhagen were any indication, mankind sees little value in forests, but much in tree plantations. (On the other hand, I admit that those of us who really do care about forests have not exactly been helpful. We have not encouraged selective harvesting from naturally occurring stands, which may be necessary.) "
As the most forested state in the U.S. and one with a relatively low population density, I believe that Maine is an exemplary "carbon citizen". Moreover, I believe that because we have practical and economic uses for our trees, some of the harvesting we do may be helping on the carbon sequestration front.

As I understand it, when a tree reaches maturity, its annual growth is slowed. It is not producing as much annual biomass as it did in earlier years. But it is locking up vast amounts of carbon - among many other things. I hope that in a couple hundred years, we have many more old growth forests.

If forests are managed for harvest and their wood is burnt, then this is carbon neutral, i.e., in essence no more carbon is released into the air than the amount once captured from the air. Now, if all forests were combusted for say firewood today, we'd have some very large problems and certainly lots of CO2 release. So carbon neutrality alone is misleading - it must be viewed within the context of time scale.

If some of that same forest were instead harvested for say furniture wood, then time scale could be on our side. Eventually the furniture would somehow lose to the forces of nature and release its carbon, but during the whole time that those coffee tables and bookcases were carbon detention centers, new trees would have filled the spots where the furniture once grew, and overall sequestration progress is witnessed. (And civilization would have consumed lots of coffee on those tables and stayed awake to read plenty of books).

I believe that hardwoods may sequester more CO2 than softwoods. But before we try to encourage more hardwood growth and turn Maine into a worlwide center of excellence in the manufacture and export of carbon detention centers disguised as chests of drawers and hutches under brand names like Carbon Jail and Save the Planet Chairs made with officially stamped Maine signature woods bearing the names of our cherished localities, I believe we really need to step back and look at all of the issues, supposed remedies and their unintended consequences wholistically. That is, within the context of everything as best we can.

I believe that any such wholistic look would reject the desecration of the Maine Woods for the green feelgood icon du jour, the wind turbine.

That said, in view of all the increased awareness about the interrelatedness between the world's forests and everything else in the world, rather than pump all this energy and money into the subsidy-stealing scam of ineffective industrial wind, it could be of benefit to step back and look at our current forest management practices within this context to see if there is any value in fine-tuning these practices in Maine that would be both desirable and practical.

And yes, there is now an empty cup of coffee on my coffee table.