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Coastal Redwood Forests: Carbon Offsets or Climate Mitigation
Private corporate industrial commercial timberlands in Mendocino County do not have the standing timber volume inventory to merit carbon sequestration offsets accreditation. Mendocino Redwood Company should not be paid a green certified cent by large scale industrial polluters to ship the remaining redwood forests to expanding markets overseas for carbon offsets. The forest carbon offset marketplace is consumer-product oriented. The short-rotation carbon-decay curve diminishes the intrinsic value of forest ecosystem functions, and reduces actual sequestration within the forest ecosystems by exporting the future health of the forest as softwood cambium carbon pools, in repeated perturbations as peak carbon flux events.
Coastal Redwood Forests: Carbon Offsets or Climate Mitigation
"Since 1901, the average number of hours of fog along the coast in summer has dropped from 56 percent to 42 percent, which is a loss of about three hours per day. A cool coast and warm interior is one of the defining characteristics of California's coastal climate, but the temperature difference between the coast and interior has declined substantially in the last century, in step with the decline in summer fog."
http://www.livescience.com/6119-fog-california-stress-redwoods.html
Fog(drip) is captured by Redwood needles - an Old Growth Tree (OGT) collects droplets on perhaps 60 million needles, a surface area of one acre.
Trees connect sky to Earth
That's what's missing in the coastal watersheds....
The decline in fog is proportional to the unprecedented decline of climax forests and tall trees over the water courses. Foresters and Cal-FIRE speak of applying methods to promote faster growth of larger diameter trees, (gesturing with their hands like a story-telling event or fish tale) and avoid discussing the merits intrinsic to forest ecosystem watershed functions and services. The diameter expressed though, doesn't seem to expand beyond the shoulder width.
In simplest terms, ecosystem functions are nature's unabridged collective biota and operational abundance while the 'services' are what humans have drawn upon, through development of resources for sustenance and commerce, including uses outside the ecosystem that supports the services provided.
And so it is, that at the landscape level, ecosystem functions are currently, pretty dysfunctional.
Once upon a time, not so long ago, the California Forest Forest Practices Regulations held that the gold standard for site productivity (bft/ac) in the redwood region was a growth/height index over a span of 100 years; called the Soil Site Class Productivity Index (PI) it showed the “Productivity Potential” by Soil Site Class - an index in terms of tree height in feet, of Young-Growth Redwoods at 100 years old.” Sometimes charted from 50-160 or by the 5 main indexes. Below, soil PI is listed first, the first and best are the bottom lands - near rivers and streams, the fifth (harshest soils) includes the dry ridges and side slopes. The soil type, and soil site class by productivity index, are correlated. Tree height, at 100 years is listed in the second column. The age is taken at breast height.
I greater than 180
II 155-179
III 130-154
IV 105-129
V less than 105
Mendocino Redwood Company uses a (PI) Classification System based on 50 years!
This is key to understanding the diminished scale of stand characteristics in the biometrics and quantifiers used to qualify a forest management policy based on recruitment scenarios, spread across three landscape management documents; the THP, Option A, and MRC's Landscape Management Planning Document. Recently updated and published March 2015 by Mendocino Redwood Company, LLC:
Landscape Management Plan 87 pages, 2.3 MB
http://www.hrcllc.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/01/MP_Rev0031.pdf
Redwood Forests - Trees, Fog and Rain
In the redwood region, the understory growth which occurs mostly in summer receives an average 60 percent of of it's water uptake from fog drip. That 60 percent can only be captured by an overstory canopy that is contiguous.
“The Use Of Fog Precipitation By Plants In Coastal Redwood Forests” did much to dispel conventional wisdom deeming trees, especially old growth conifers, as harbourers of water, capturing and storing water then made unavailable to streams for example. Dawson's work indicates that fog and its interception by these giant trees contributes large volumes of water to forest habitat through the process of fog drip.
Hydrogen and oxygen, the two compounds making up water, are formed in different arrangements depending upon the source. Fog water and rainwater can be distinguished based on the different ratios of isotopes they contain. Dawson collected plant samples on fog days and analyzed water isotopes he had isolated from the xylem of plant species to determine which water source the trees and understory plants were using.
He found that during the summer months when fog was most frequent in northern California and southern Oregon, between 8-34% of the water used by the redwood, Sequoia sempervirens, was fog derived. Usually the species is dependent upon deeper soil or ground water provided by rainfall during winter rainfall events. Between 6-100% of the water used by the understory vegetation came from fog derived precipitation after it had dripped from the tree foliage into the soil. Continuing hydrologic studies indicate that moisture input to the redwood forests from fog constitutes between 30-75% of the annual water budget.
As fog moves into a forested area, it travels through the canopy and the moisture is effectively stripped from the air by the tree's branches and array of needle-like foliage, which Dawson describes as a 'layered-like comb'. The water captured by the needles - an old tree collects droplets on perhaps 60 million needles, a surface area of one acre - then drips down branches and trunk to the plants growing at the base of the tree. During the summer months, sword ferns appeared to be completely dependent upon fog derived precipitation. This seminal work suggests that fog drip can account for half of the water coming into a redwood forest in a year and is critical in maintaining the moisture that so many species depend upon in northwestern rain forests.
Dawson also discovered that “not only are the plants of coastal redwood forests using high proportions of fog water but that the presence of the trees themselves significantly influences and moderates the magnitude of water input from fog. Between 22-46% of the moisture input to the ecosystem was due to the presence of the redwood trees themselves (interception input) and when trees were absent interception input declined by 19-40%.”
“Loss of the canopy trees means not only the loss of biomass and nutrients within the biomass, and the soils, but also a fundamental conversion of a once moist, cool, forested ecosystem into a more drought prone, and warmer ecosystem.”
“Redwoods require prodigious amounts of moisture during the growing season, attributed to the low efficiency of their vascular conducting system. Transpiration rates of 500 gallons per day have been reported, whereas more drought-resistant old-growth Douglas-fir transpire around 140 gallons daily.”
Forty years ago, Azevedo and Morgan (1974) published "Fog Precipitation In Coastal California Forests” and determined that fog drip affects both water balances and nutrient cycling within coastal ecosystems. They recorded as much as 3.15 inches of fog precipitation beneath one Humboldt County redwood in 48 hours. In the mountains east of Half Moon Bay, an astounding 58.8 inches of fog drip was collected by Oberlander (1956) under an exposed, 20-foot high tanoak (Lithocarpus densiflora) in 39 days!
Todd Dawson's “The Use Of Fog Precipitation By Plants In Coastal Redwood Forests” (From The Ecology of Sequoia Sempervirens) – full document for download:
http://www.askmar.com/Redwoods/Redwood_Thesis.html
Todd Dawson's research continues a quarter of a century later, 2009:
http://www.caryinstitute.org/sites/default/files/public/reprints/Ewing_09_Ecosys.pdf
Watershed Runoff, Sub-basin Groundwater Recharge, Rainfall, Fog Drip
In the 1990 publication “Logging Effects on Streamflow: Water Yield and Summer Low Flows at Caspar Creek in Northwestern California” (Elizabeth T. Keppeler And Robert R. Ziemer) research is discussed from 1980 which had concluded that:
“After timber harvest, the number of low-flow days increased, suggesting summer flows were actually reduced as a result of logging. Harr in 1980 hypothesized that this anomaly was the result of reduced fog drip interception after clearing the forest. In a subsequent study, as much as 44% more net precipitation was measured in late spring and summer beneath the forest canopy than in a clearing. During two fall seasons, differences of 18 and 22% were observed (Harr, 1982). Within the forest, fog drip accounted for roughly one third of all precipitation for the May-September period. Harr had concluded that in addition to offsetting canopy interception and evaporation losses, fog drip at this site may have provided about 50 cm additional water to the forest floor.”
“Subsequent analysis of recent streamflow data from the Fox Creek experimental watershed indicates that a recovery has occurred from the harvest impacts on summer water yield due to loss of fog drip. These results suggest that by the elimination of fog drip through the removal of forest vegetation, anticipated enhancement of summer flows may not be realized in areas where fog occurrence is a frequent source of significant moisture.”
http://www.fs.fed.us/psw/publications/ziemer/Ziemer90a.PDF
Some foresters though have queried; Are big trees mechanisms of rainfall interception and loss in a coastal redwood forest?
“Rainfall, throughfall, and stemflow were monitored at 5-min intervals for 3 years in a 120-year-old forest dominated by redwood (Sequoia sempervirens) and Douglas-fir (Pseudotsuga menziesii) at the Caspar Creek Experimental Watersheds, located in northwest California, USA. Of total annual rainfall, 22 percent is stored on foliage and stems and evaporates before reaching the ground. Comparison of the timing of rainfall and throughfall indicates that about 46% of the intercepted moisture is lost through post-storm evaporation from foliage and 54% is either evaporated during the storm or enters long-term storage in bark. In any case, loss rates remain high; over 15% even during the highest-intensity storms monitored. Clearcut logging in the area would increase effective annual rainfall by 20–30% due to reduction of interception loss, and most of the increase would occur during large storms, thus potentially influencing peakflows and hillslope pore-pressures during geomorphically significant events.”
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0022169409003850
Effective Annual Rainfall; How Is That For A Clearcut Rationale?
The reality of the effective rainfall might be floods, exacerbated erosion, whole hill sides moving downward, breaking homes and buildings as landslides. The carbon bound in construction materials goes to the landfill. And once the soil starts moving, there goes that carbon, exported offsite, and as GHG emissions.
But in identifying just how much water fog contributes to a forest ecosystem, the question of why more water runs off or out of watersheds than falls as precipitation is understood. “In a study conducted in Oregon's Bull Run watershed, Portland's primary water source, by the Portland Bureau of Water Works, where the annual rainfall is approximately forty inches while the average runoff is 135 inches.”
Fog drip contributed 35 percent of annual precipitation under the old growth canopy.
http://www.spruceroots.org/June01/Fog.html
Fog, Climate Change And Redwood Forests
Two chapters, 18 pages in total are listed in the publication: “The Proceedings of the Coast Redwood Forests in a Changing California: A Symposium for Scientists and Managers” (2011)
p 281 “Fog and Soil Weathering as Sources of Nutrients in a California Redwood Forest”
and;
p289 “Foliar Uptake of Fog in the Coast Redwood Ecosystem: a Novel Drought-Alleviation
Strategy Shared by Most Redwood Forest Plants”
This is the link to the “ Proceedings of the Coast Redwood Forests in a Changing California” full document – an indexed PDF nearly 700 pages and 15 MB.
http://www.fs.fed.us/psw/publications/documents/psw_gtr238/psw_gtr238.pdf
Another specific study, on understory ferns, was published in the American Journal Of Botany in 2010: “Polystichum munitum (Dryopteridaceae) Varies Geographically In Its Capacity To Absorb Fog Water By Foliar Uptake Within The Redwood Forest Ecosystem”
http://www.amjbot.org/content/97/7/1121.full
In the research paper, the authors state; “Fog provides a critical water resource to plants around the world. In the redwood forest ecosystem of northern California, plants depend on fog absorbed through foliar uptake to stay hydrated during the rainless summer. In this study, we identified regions within the redwood ecosystem where the fern Polystichum munitum canopy most effectively absorbs fog drip that reaches the forest floor.”
The team measured the foliar uptake capacity of P. munitum fronds at seven sites along 700 km of the redwood forest ecosystem and quantified the canopy cover of P. munitum at each site and estimated how much water the fern canopy can acquire aboveground through fog interception and absorption. Informative and technical, download as a PDF, 8 pages:
http://www.amjbot.org/content/97/7/1121.full.pdf
Growing Money On Trees – Carbon Counterfeit Currency
Silvicultural regimes, arbitrarily focus on estimated carbon accounting for offsets rather than natural assets. Managing forests for maximum sustained yield of water makes more sense.
Growing Carbon - Logging In Columns And Ledgers; An Asymptotic Arbitrary Algorithm
Throughout discussions on forest carbon management, estimates of carbon storage have several variables. Two formulated and related parameters are forest production, termed maximum sustained yield; and asymptotic carbon, an arbitrary algorithm balancing production and sustainable market places in a value added consumption based model where increased flow of forest products is seen as reducing GHG emissions of CO2.
As arbitrary as it is, it's just an updated version of tree (farm) crop rotations and forward looking harvest re-entry periods by return on investment. Not the investment in the forests specific to production. The return on investment globally, which can include new distribution centers and store locations for new overseas markets, driving the export of predicted increase production volume of sequestered carbon in the form of locally derived forest products.
The Sustainable Market Place, An Investment In Increased Production
Capital investment in local mill operations does not by itself necessarily mean 1) an increase in workers employed offsite of local timberland (forest) production units per every mmbft extracted from privately held commercial timberlands, or 2) increased sales-tax revenues within the county of origin for timber products sold through the MRC/MFP Distribution Center in Hawaii or Guam.
This is not a rhetorical question...
What is the difference between an arc, and a curve? “The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends towards righteousness.” Dr. Martin Luther King
A curve will bend toward management.
“All forests increase sequestration and storage of carbon with age. Managed forests do it on a curve.” Jae Fagan
Asymptotic Carbon Storage In Timber Products
The term asymptotic, is a mathematical concept, and means for any equation; 'approaching a value or curve arbitrarily closely - as in some sort of limit'. Asymptotic is an adjective meaning 'of a probability distribution as some variable or parameter of it goes to infinity.' In carbon forestry - one of the parameters is the rotation cycle, and a variable would be the yearly growth curve. Another variable in carbon forestry is the 'forest product' and it's relative decay time, or continued product sequestration of carbon over it's useful lifetime. The relative decay time is a function of the carbon fraction (heartwood ratio to sapwood) at the asymptote (nearest non-intersection of a curve and a straight line) of the harvest rotation period and product life-cycle or decay time. The product life-cycle assessment also may include the time to decompose in a landfill.
Context of the times - carbon accounting determines optimal ecosystem services. But the concept of ecosystem services, flows from intrinsic site-specific ecosystem functions.
Tree Farms Don't Cut It
And neither do carbon crops with 50 - 60 year crop rotations within Mendocino Redwood Company managed Sustainability Units of twenty year harvest periods (broken into four large spatially adjacent 5 year re-entry zones or harvest blocks) favoring continued applications of herbicides to promote commercial conifer release. This all leaves behind, forest recruitment scenarios and modeled token retention levels, averaged across the landscape of large woody debris on the forest floor and in the streams for wildlife needs. It leaves behind 80 year old trees greater than 24 inch diameter at breast height that supposedly supercede the structural characteristics of remnant Old Growth trees and are faster growing trees - but three per acre is plenty, any more than that may be harvested. Several !6 inch diameter trees are left for recruitment to be the next 24 inch trees on subsequent re-entries for harvest.
Clearcuts Are Recruitment Models For Late Seral Forest!
The Redwood is a dominant forest species which begins it's real growth in terms of volume per acre of high-quality commercial grade timber products at around 120 years of age with a volumetric growth curve that lasts beyond the age of three hundred years ... oops, the metric of “faster growing trees store more carbon” is exposed for the certified myth that it is.
The crux of the equation is in the flux of carbon:
1) Harvesting an old stand with a low or zero yield increment and replacing it with a young vigorous stand seems to make sense for mitigating climate change since the growth of the tree is a sign of carbon uptake. While that statement is true from a "flux" or "annual uptake" point of view, it's less certain when you think about carbon stocks. What is being done with the harvested carbon stock? Is it being burned in slash piles, turned into paper or solid-wood furniture? The amount of carbon stored in a 300 year old stand can be huge. To get back to the same carbon density per hectare could take 250 years or more.
2) From a carbon storage point of view, longer rotations result in more carbon stored per hectare. The carbon benefit of longer rotations though, is not due to the rate of uptake (which slows after 100-120 years of growth). The benefit is due to the storage in the biomass and relative balance of the annual turnover (litterfall and mortality) feeding the decomposition of dead wood into soil carbon. If a stand that has historically been disturbed every 350 years starts to be part of a thirty year rotation plan, there will be a lot of carbon dioxide (CO 2) released from the soil. Less carbon will be transferred from the living biomass to the dead wood and soil to maintain the carbon stocks on the site.
On the other hand, if a site has already been harvested and is part of a short-rotation system, it might be better to maintain the short-rotation there... and have the carbon stored as forest products, rather than shift an alternate older stand stand from long rotation to short rotation.
But wait, there's excitement when professionals speak of growing larger diameter trees faster!
The agitated growth response requires conifer release methods that employ poisons, and in Mendocino County, has left millions of dead standing trees in the forest. Unfortunately, assessing Redwood forest ecosystem carbon stocks on large private-held commercial timberlands employs accounting methods that generally consider only standing live trees and the longevity (or useful life cycle in years) of derived wood products for purposes of GHG carbon offsets.
Misconception: “Short rotation managed stands are better at carbon storage than un-managed stands.” This misconception hinges in part on the assumptions that carbon stored in deadwood and soils are inconsequential, and that decomposition is the same in managed and un-managed stands. These assumptions are not true. If the whole ecosystem is considered, there is more storage in the un-managed stands than in managed stands. The misconception also relies on estimates of carbon storage in wood products, landfills and avoided emissions, which have an uncertainty of more than 40% (several studies confirm this uncertainty).
https://www.for.gov.bc.ca/ftp/HET/external/!publish/Web/climate/Misconceptions.pdf
Is it just roshomon, comparing ecosystem functions and carbon equation functions?
From the time of initial planting, the time taken to reach asymptotic carbon storage decreases as the carbon crop timber harvest rotation period decreases, but increases almost linearly with increasing decay time of timber products. This result qualifies the short-term value of any particular planting strategy, leading to 50-60 year harvest cycles as an industry standard.
Carbon Storage Accounting: A Function Of Forest Growth, Rotation Period And The Useful Life-Cycle Of Timber Products
If the carbon retention curve for timber products from a given harvest (region/ownership) extends beyond the time of the next harvest, then carbon storage increases in successive rotations. In general, the total amount of carbon stored in a forest and its timber products at any time is the sum of the current forest growth curve and contributions from the retention curves of timber products not yet decayed and reconverted to carbon dioxide, from all previous rotations.
The computation of carbon storage during successive rotations becomes the weighted-average of the carbon retention curves of all timber products, and increases as the fraction (in the stored carbon equation) of felled timber used for products.
Heartwood is another consideration, known as the carbon fraction – the merchantable contribution or carbon density ratio of heartwood to cambium softwood in a tree bole, or branches, for residual decay equations of forest soils carbon content; and relative to decay and CO2 emissions – the useful life-cycle of forest products.
So the forest carbon growth curve, is not straightforward, because foresters need to include the variation of carbon density in living trees, induced by the change in harvest rotation periods. As the product decay time increases, the curve of asymptotic carbon storage, plotted against the harvest cycle or rotation time, develops a peak at some optimal rotation period. “The contribution to carbon stored in living trees from timber products increasingly dominates the equation and thus the mean annual increment has a maximum. At this limit, forest management for maximum sustained yield also ensures maximum carbon storage.”
Did you get that?
The Asymptote Of Maximum Sustained Yield Is A Clean, Green Tree Farm
What is the time frame for a tree, or a forest to reach maximum asymptotic carbon storage?
“It is simplest to model the average carbon retention curve with a decaying exponential: If the harvest rotation period, is increased indefinitely, carbon storage increases monotonically towards the total actual carbon content of living trees at maturity. Therefore, most carbon is stored when the forest is not harvested at all.” Basically, natural laws provide parameter sets for equations where the increasing storage rate remains unchanged and results in highest carbon sequestration during species maturity.
But the shift in materials for construction purposes would likely be more carbon intensive, and this is a form of leakage... a transfer of carbon GHG emissions and responsibility. Therefore, under the carbon-forestry approach, managed forests and the harvested trees and resulting timber products together, can store more carbon than un-managed forests alone. And so it is that management for maximum sustained yield of products is said to ensure maximum carbon storage.
But remember, the contribution to carbon stored in living trees from timber products increasingly dominates the equation which determines the mean annual increment 'plotted maximum'. At this short-rotation imposed parameter, forest management for maximum sustained yield also ensures maximum carbon storage to a sustainable marketplace, and predictable return on investments.
Point of clarification: 'return on investment' is not meant to denote a return on any forest investment, Beyond the purchase, forests are considered the cheapest carbon sequestration project investment with the highest yield. In the case of commercial timberland, the 'return on investment' is considered to be the return on investment funds (sourced) from the forest, and invested elsewhere, offsite, and may have nothing to do with forests or carbon sequestration. The investment can be used to seek a return on the purchase of a company or shares in a company in an unrelated industrial sector, or to build a storefront distribution center.
Forests Are Considered The Cheapest Carbon Sequestration Project Investment
“In regulatory programs, a cap-and-trade system sets a state, regional or national cap, or limit, on how many GHG emissions are permitted from regulated entities. Capped entities can meet their compliance obligation through emission allowances, auction or allocated to them by a governmental agency, or purchasing offsets from uncapped sectors. Forestry is considered an uncapped sector in compliance markets and IFM offsets can be created at lower costs compared to offsets from other sectors.”
http://www.uvm.edu/rsenr/wkeeton/pubpdfs/Kerchner%20and%20Keeton_2015_Forest%20Policy%20and%20Economics.pdf
New markets increase purchases of products supporting the flow offsite of carbon from short rotation tree farms, buoying the decay quantifier to balance the carbon equation.
For nature's sake, commercial products are a form of forest carbon that should not be calculated into 'standing, live tree carbon' assessments (under CCAR, CORE, REDD) for the sake of 'cap and trade' or the voluntary carbon offsets market.
Forest products are the commercial form of accrued carbon as the portion that is extracted by landowners. Benefits will come in time with less environmental damage per entry, higher value stumpage, and higher quality in products. Forest health should be a non-payable dividend, and not receivable as currency, with no exchange rate marketable as carbon offsets for pollution mitigation. Current certification systems, use carbon models that substantiate an increased flow of forest products to expanded markets based on manipulated landscape data fostering a carbon short-rotation tree-farm baseline.
Carbon Quality (CQ) also known as the heartwood to softwood ratio, is not used in commercial forest products carbon accounting, as the price of timber products must remain low enough to foster the flow of carbon exchange - Farmed Carbon at the Carbon Exchange!
Completely Arbitrary Methodology: Asymptotic Carbon Storage or Forest Health
Redwood decks, fencing, and furniture will not improve forest habitat for streams and rivers, the salmon, the flora and fauna, fog drip, nor groundwater and sub-basin aquifer recharge.
“However, the time taken to reach asymptotic carbon storage, while decreasing as the normal rotation period decreases, increases almost linearly with the average extended decay time of timber products. Because the asymptotic level of carbon storage in timber products is additional, the effect of converting production of a given forest to longer-lived products is to accumulate carbon at the same mean rate over a longer period of time than the harvest cycle.
By contrast, the effect of enhancing the growth rate of trees (conifer release, stocking) for a particular calculated parameter of products is to accumulate more carbon over a shorter period of time.”
But this is not “Additionality” under carbon law! CCAR v3.2 (CORE) (IFM)
Most commercial timberland “models of carbon storage do not incorporate the retention of carbon in detritus and soil organic matter. This contribution represents the largest pool of carbon in most temperate forest stands (Schlesinger 1977, Gholz and Fisher 1982, Cooper 1983) so that it is important to quantify the effects of harvesting on the storage of carbon in soils.” (from) Tree Physiology 6,417-428 0 1990 Heron Publishing-Victoria, Canada
A Model Of Carbon Storage In Forests And Forest Products;
Roderick C. Dewar; Institute of Terrestrial Ecology,
Bush Estate, Penicuik, Midlothian EH26 OQB, Scotland Received January 3, 1990
I feel personally, that one must go back in time, to baselines from when there were studies in Old Growth forests for answers to the Redwood Region's role in climate mitigation. Carbon accounting methods and algorithms have only adjusted the carbon storage asymptote formulated on short rotation productivity to continue the business as usual approach to expanding markets.
I think it can be said that Mendocino Redwood Company has no heart(wood).
Carbon Storage in Young Growth Coast Redwood Stands:
Carbon Fraction And Wood Density Of Coast Redwood
“As an expression of the carbon fraction, analysis of carbon fraction for the three wood types showed that heartwood was consistently higher in carbon than sapwood, and that mature heartwood was higher in carbon than juvenile heartwood samples.”
Coast redwood (Sequoia sempervirens) stands have the largest measured biomass per acre making the argument for use of the species in long-term carbon sequestration projects self evident. Forest Service Pacific Southwest Research tested the applicability of the current forest carbon project protocols set out by the Climate Action Reserve for forest carbon credit projects within California. In April 2012, the U.S. Department of Agriculture Forest Service Pacific Southwest Research Station Albany, California presented a research paper at the UC Santa Cruz symposium: GENERAL TECHNICAL REPORT PSW-GTR-238;
“Near Fort Bragg, California tree cores were collected from coast redwood stands located at Railroad Gulch on Jackson Demonstration State Forest. Redwood stands at this location regenerated naturally from stump sprouts and from seedlings planted after removal of the old growth stands around 1920 (Jackson 1991). Sample trees were randomly selected from a database created in 1982 when Railroad Gulch was divided into 14 contiguous blocks. A total of 42 trees were selected ranging in age from 23 to 87 years, ranging in breast height diameter from 13 to 86 cm (5 - 34.5 inches) and ranging in height from 5 to 45 m (16 - 148 feet)”
“Two cores were taken perpendicularly to the bole axis at a 45 degree angle to slope aspect on opposite sides of sample trees. The increment corer was cleaned between trees to avoid contamination. A subset of four trees were selected for additional core extractions taken from halfway between base of live crown, at live crown and halfway between tree top and live crown. These cores were used for analysis of vertical variation in wood density. Cores were then placed in straws, sealed and labeled.”
“Ten cores for paired carbon and density analysis were cut in half lengthwise and divided up into three categories: 1) juvenile heartwood (first seven growth rings from pith); 2) mature heartwood (three growth rings away from sapwood heartwood boundary and showing no curvature of the growth rings); and 3) sapwood (determined by color). This resulted in 30 samples analyzed for density (10 of each wood type) with corresponding halves of segments analyzed for carbon. Ninety-six additional core segments were selected strictly for carbon analysis, however, these samples were not cut in half.”
“Wood density was significantly different for sapwood found above the live crown (ALC) versus below live crown (BLC) but not significantly different for heartwood by location in tree or between juvenile and mature heartwood.”
(See core sample image)
“Differences in wood characteristics such as density, shearing strength and extractive content between old-growth redwood and young growth redwood (Resch and Arganbright 1968), make extrapolation of the values from this study to old-growth redwood inadvisable. The higher extractive content in old-growth redwood would most likely result in higher carbon fraction of the stem compared to young growth as extractives can be made up of as much as 66 percent carbon (Resch and Arganbright 1968).”
It is often said, “half the weight of a tree is carbon” but there, you see key wording...
weight, carbon, tree. It's a weighted average of the carbon density with several key variables and a 40 percent margin for error. But globally, the general rule of thumb is point 50.
“It is known that hardwoods have carbon fractions that are typically lower than 0.50 (Lamlom and Savidge 2003) and therefore utilizing a default value of 0.50 for estimates of hardwood tree carbon will systematically overestimate the amount of carbon contained within many hardwood species The overall measured mean of carbon fraction in young growth redwood is significantly greater than the 0.50 value that is often used for trees.”
GENERAL TECHNICAL REPORT PSW-GTR-238
Carbon Storage in Young Growth Coast Redwood Stands
The Anatomy Of Sources And Sinks At The Stand And Landscape Level
A forest ecosystem acts as a "sink" (a net removal of atmospheric CO2) when there is an increase in the sum of all carbon stocks retained in the forest vegetation itself and the derived stocks of organic carbon in other reservoirs. The most important of these derived reservoirs are the detritus and soil organic matter pools of the forest ecosystem.
At the landscape (or biome) scale, a forest is a mosaic of many stands of trees (individual ecosystems) in various stages of development. The net carbon balance at this scale is the summation across all such ecosystems in the landscape.
Changes in the net carbon accumulation at the landscape scale have two components: changes in the productivity of the individual ecosystems with environmental variations (soils, humus) and the changes in the age-class distribution associated with landscape variation in mortality and recruitment.
Forests, The Global Carbon Cycle And Climate Change
http://www.fao.org/docrep/ARTICLE/WFC/XII/MS14-E.HTM
“Landscape sources and sinks of atmospheric carbon can arise from changes in ecosystem productivity or from changes in the disturbance regime. If the disturbance rates increase, the age-class distribution shifts to younger stands and the total carbon retained in the ecosystems in the landscape decreases - the landscape is a transient net source of CO2 to the atmosphere until a new stable age-class distribution is reached.”
“If carbon is transported out of the ecosystem landscape to decompose in off-site reservoirs, such as forest products, the landscape source is reduced by that amount - in essence this component of the source is exported. Similarly, if disturbances are suppressed, the distributions shift to the right older forest stands and carbon stocks increase with a transient net removal of CO2 from the atmosphere.”
The Source And Sink Dilemma
“The trade of forest products results in a spatial displacement of the source component (at the site of the decomposing product) relative to a comparable sink component (in the forest ecosystem). The carbon contained in forest products makes a small, and manageable, contribution to the global carbon balance.”
“Globally, the net effect on atmospheric concentration is negligible unless the rate of decomposition in the geographically displaced product pools is different from that in the forest ecosystem from which it was removed. Controlling these rates through wise management, however, can offer some degree of mitigation of the increases in atmospheric CO2.”
Mitigation Of The Increases
That's all we get. The mitigation only applies to any increases due to changes in the plotted asymptotic carbon values. The forest carbon offset marketplace is consumer-product oriented. The short-rotation carbon-decay curve and plotted exchange rates diminish the intrinsic value of forest ecosystem functions, and reduce actual sequestration within the forest ecosystems by exporting the future health of the forest as softwood cambium carbon pools, in repeated perturbations as peak carbon flux events.
Final words....
Tree Growth Never Slows - 15 January 2014
http://www.nature.com/news/tree-growth-never-slows-1.14536
Scientific literature is full of studies that focus on forests' initial growth and their gradual move towards a plateau in the amount of carbon they store as they reach maturity. Researchers have also documented a reduction in growth at the level of individual leaves in older trees.
In this recently published study, “it was found that the trees that are adding the most mass are the biggest ones, and that holds pretty much everywhere on Earth that we looked, quoting Nathan Stephenson, an ecologist at the US Geological Survey in Three Rivers, California, and the first author of the study. He and his colleagues analyzed reams of data on 673,046 trees from 403 species in monitored forest plots, in both tropical and temperate areas around the world. They found that the largest trees gained the most mass each year in 97% of the species, capitalizing on their additional leaves and adding ever more girth high in the sky.”
Although they relied mostly on existing data, the team calculated growth rates at the level of the individual trees, whereas earlier studies had typically looked at the overall carbon stored in a plot. The researchers' calculations consistently showed that larger trees added the most mass. In one old-growth forest plot in the western United States, trees larger than 48 inches in diameter (at breast height) comprised just 6% of trees, but accounted for 33% of the growth.
The findings build on a detailed case study published in 2010, which showed similar growth trends for two of the world’s tallest trees, the coast redwood (Sequoia sempervirens) and the eucalyptus (Eucalyptus regnans), both of which can grow well past 300 feet in height.
“The results are consistent with the known reduction in growth at the leaf level as trees age. Although individual leaves may be less efficient, older trees have more of them. And in older forests, fewer large trees dominate growth trends until they are eventually brought down by a combination of fungi, fires, wind and gravity; the rate of carbon accumulation depends on forest turn over.”
“It’s the geometric reality of tree growth: bigger trees have more leaves, and they have more surface across which wood carbon is deposited. Younger trees may grow faster on a relative scale, meaning that they take less time double in size, but on an absolute scale, the old trees keep growing far more.”
And old trees can, as part of a forest ecosystem, sequester far more carbon, and produce higher stumpage, higher employment, higher timber tax yields, higher carbon quality forest products, and at the same time provide prodigious amounts of more cool water in the rivers, more fish, etc., etc., etc.
The effective climate mitigation potential of the redwood forests is not in short-rotation carbon product storage and Home-Depot shoppers, but onsite in the forest. Redwood forests also hold another, perhaps bigger climate mitigation potential - water. Instream flows, increased fish counts, healthy viable populations of flora and fauna.
Mendocino County's second growth forests can be better managed. Which begs the question, better than what?
These following links are representative of the current state of the forests and concerns in Mendocino County which range from increased danger of timberland wildfires and the rural public's safety, herbicide applications, the health and productivity of the forests, and millions of dead standing trees left onsite by the Mendocino Redwood Company, the largest private timberland owner in Mendocino County. MRC timberland managers state publicly there is no increased fire danger.... View the 7 minute film, it's unsettling in scope and scale.
From The Lorax Library Archives: Santa Rosa Press Democrat 2010 the following...
“David Bischel, president of the California Forestry Association, representing timber harvesters and processors, said the new rules, known as the Forest Protocol, help to monetize an important environmental benefit by encouraging more standing timber in the forests and more wood products used by society.”
“Early drafts of the protocol, dating back to 2007, did not permit clear cutting, said Jeff Shellito, an environmental consultant and former aide to state Sen. Byron Sher of Palo Alto, now retired. In 2002, Sher authored legislation that established forest-preservation standards for California’s then-voluntary carbon market.”
“We went to great pains to ensure you couldn’t get carbon credits from clear cutting,” Shellito said. But five years later, the timber industry began lobbying to alter the protocol in its favor. A nonprofit organization, the Climate Action Reserve (CAR, CCAR), which was created to establish standards for the verification of greenhouse gas emissions and reductions, is the primary author of the new rules.”
47 environmental and conservation groups, including the Sierra Club California and the Center for Biological Diversity, protested to the California Air Resources Board. “Mary Nichols, chairwoman of the Air Resources Board, said California already has the strictest timber standards in the nation and is considering adding provisions to explicitly discourage clear-cut practices from obtaining carbon credits.”
http://www.pressdemocrat.com/article/20101215/ARTICLES/101219664/1350?p=1&tc=pg
Reality check number 48....
The Society Of American Foresters - Western Forests Oct 2014 has this to say:
“Carbon sequestration in forests has been identified as one of the options for reducing CO2 concentrations in the atmosphere. The relative magnitudes of CO2 emissions from forest cover change and CO2 emissions from fossil fuel combustion would indicate that we are not going to solve the fossil fuel emissions problem by growing more forests on more acres, at least here in the US.”
http://www.forestry.org/media/docs/westernforester/2014/WFSeptOct14.pdf
Private corporate industrial commercial timberlands in Mendocino County do not have the standing timber volume inventory to merit carbon sequestration offsets accreditation. Mendocino Redwood Company should not be paid a green certified cent by large scale industrial polluters to ship the remaining redwood forests to markets overseas for carbon offsets.
Decks, and fencing, and picnic tables, oh my!
Decks, and fencing, and picnic tables, oh my!
Follow the yellow brick road to gold.
Follow this link to a 7 minute video (Google Earth) of “Dead Standing Trees” with landscape scale narration and detail both in the overview, and overlay of timber harvest plans by date, and acreage, outlining THP plan areas and dead standing trees on Mendocino Redwood Company owned timberlands in Mendocino County. Published March/April 2015.
https://www.hightail.com/download/UlRSQndFdGoyWGV5VmNUQw
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Tomas DiFiore
Carbon Offsets, carbon sequestration, Climate Mitigation, Coastal Redwood Forests, redwood decks, timberlands in Mendocino County,
"Since 1901, the average number of hours of fog along the coast in summer has dropped from 56 percent to 42 percent, which is a loss of about three hours per day. A cool coast and warm interior is one of the defining characteristics of California's coastal climate, but the temperature difference between the coast and interior has declined substantially in the last century, in step with the decline in summer fog."
http://www.livescience.com/6119-fog-california-stress-redwoods.html
Fog(drip) is captured by Redwood needles - an Old Growth Tree (OGT) collects droplets on perhaps 60 million needles, a surface area of one acre.
Trees connect sky to Earth
That's what's missing in the coastal watersheds....
The decline in fog is proportional to the unprecedented decline of climax forests and tall trees over the water courses. Foresters and Cal-FIRE speak of applying methods to promote faster growth of larger diameter trees, (gesturing with their hands like a story-telling event or fish tale) and avoid discussing the merits intrinsic to forest ecosystem watershed functions and services. The diameter expressed though, doesn't seem to expand beyond the shoulder width.
In simplest terms, ecosystem functions are nature's unabridged collective biota and operational abundance while the 'services' are what humans have drawn upon, through development of resources for sustenance and commerce, including uses outside the ecosystem that supports the services provided.
And so it is, that at the landscape level, ecosystem functions are currently, pretty dysfunctional.
Once upon a time, not so long ago, the California Forest Forest Practices Regulations held that the gold standard for site productivity (bft/ac) in the redwood region was a growth/height index over a span of 100 years; called the Soil Site Class Productivity Index (PI) it showed the “Productivity Potential” by Soil Site Class - an index in terms of tree height in feet, of Young-Growth Redwoods at 100 years old.” Sometimes charted from 50-160 or by the 5 main indexes. Below, soil PI is listed first, the first and best are the bottom lands - near rivers and streams, the fifth (harshest soils) includes the dry ridges and side slopes. The soil type, and soil site class by productivity index, are correlated. Tree height, at 100 years is listed in the second column. The age is taken at breast height.
I greater than 180
II 155-179
III 130-154
IV 105-129
V less than 105
Mendocino Redwood Company uses a (PI) Classification System based on 50 years!
This is key to understanding the diminished scale of stand characteristics in the biometrics and quantifiers used to qualify a forest management policy based on recruitment scenarios, spread across three landscape management documents; the THP, Option A, and MRC's Landscape Management Planning Document. Recently updated and published March 2015 by Mendocino Redwood Company, LLC:
Landscape Management Plan 87 pages, 2.3 MB
http://www.hrcllc.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/01/MP_Rev0031.pdf
Redwood Forests - Trees, Fog and Rain
In the redwood region, the understory growth which occurs mostly in summer receives an average 60 percent of of it's water uptake from fog drip. That 60 percent can only be captured by an overstory canopy that is contiguous.
“The Use Of Fog Precipitation By Plants In Coastal Redwood Forests” did much to dispel conventional wisdom deeming trees, especially old growth conifers, as harbourers of water, capturing and storing water then made unavailable to streams for example. Dawson's work indicates that fog and its interception by these giant trees contributes large volumes of water to forest habitat through the process of fog drip.
Hydrogen and oxygen, the two compounds making up water, are formed in different arrangements depending upon the source. Fog water and rainwater can be distinguished based on the different ratios of isotopes they contain. Dawson collected plant samples on fog days and analyzed water isotopes he had isolated from the xylem of plant species to determine which water source the trees and understory plants were using.
He found that during the summer months when fog was most frequent in northern California and southern Oregon, between 8-34% of the water used by the redwood, Sequoia sempervirens, was fog derived. Usually the species is dependent upon deeper soil or ground water provided by rainfall during winter rainfall events. Between 6-100% of the water used by the understory vegetation came from fog derived precipitation after it had dripped from the tree foliage into the soil. Continuing hydrologic studies indicate that moisture input to the redwood forests from fog constitutes between 30-75% of the annual water budget.
As fog moves into a forested area, it travels through the canopy and the moisture is effectively stripped from the air by the tree's branches and array of needle-like foliage, which Dawson describes as a 'layered-like comb'. The water captured by the needles - an old tree collects droplets on perhaps 60 million needles, a surface area of one acre - then drips down branches and trunk to the plants growing at the base of the tree. During the summer months, sword ferns appeared to be completely dependent upon fog derived precipitation. This seminal work suggests that fog drip can account for half of the water coming into a redwood forest in a year and is critical in maintaining the moisture that so many species depend upon in northwestern rain forests.
Dawson also discovered that “not only are the plants of coastal redwood forests using high proportions of fog water but that the presence of the trees themselves significantly influences and moderates the magnitude of water input from fog. Between 22-46% of the moisture input to the ecosystem was due to the presence of the redwood trees themselves (interception input) and when trees were absent interception input declined by 19-40%.”
“Loss of the canopy trees means not only the loss of biomass and nutrients within the biomass, and the soils, but also a fundamental conversion of a once moist, cool, forested ecosystem into a more drought prone, and warmer ecosystem.”
“Redwoods require prodigious amounts of moisture during the growing season, attributed to the low efficiency of their vascular conducting system. Transpiration rates of 500 gallons per day have been reported, whereas more drought-resistant old-growth Douglas-fir transpire around 140 gallons daily.”
Forty years ago, Azevedo and Morgan (1974) published "Fog Precipitation In Coastal California Forests” and determined that fog drip affects both water balances and nutrient cycling within coastal ecosystems. They recorded as much as 3.15 inches of fog precipitation beneath one Humboldt County redwood in 48 hours. In the mountains east of Half Moon Bay, an astounding 58.8 inches of fog drip was collected by Oberlander (1956) under an exposed, 20-foot high tanoak (Lithocarpus densiflora) in 39 days!
Todd Dawson's “The Use Of Fog Precipitation By Plants In Coastal Redwood Forests” (From The Ecology of Sequoia Sempervirens) – full document for download:
http://www.askmar.com/Redwoods/Redwood_Thesis.html
Todd Dawson's research continues a quarter of a century later, 2009:
http://www.caryinstitute.org/sites/default/files/public/reprints/Ewing_09_Ecosys.pdf
Watershed Runoff, Sub-basin Groundwater Recharge, Rainfall, Fog Drip
In the 1990 publication “Logging Effects on Streamflow: Water Yield and Summer Low Flows at Caspar Creek in Northwestern California” (Elizabeth T. Keppeler And Robert R. Ziemer) research is discussed from 1980 which had concluded that:
“After timber harvest, the number of low-flow days increased, suggesting summer flows were actually reduced as a result of logging. Harr in 1980 hypothesized that this anomaly was the result of reduced fog drip interception after clearing the forest. In a subsequent study, as much as 44% more net precipitation was measured in late spring and summer beneath the forest canopy than in a clearing. During two fall seasons, differences of 18 and 22% were observed (Harr, 1982). Within the forest, fog drip accounted for roughly one third of all precipitation for the May-September period. Harr had concluded that in addition to offsetting canopy interception and evaporation losses, fog drip at this site may have provided about 50 cm additional water to the forest floor.”
“Subsequent analysis of recent streamflow data from the Fox Creek experimental watershed indicates that a recovery has occurred from the harvest impacts on summer water yield due to loss of fog drip. These results suggest that by the elimination of fog drip through the removal of forest vegetation, anticipated enhancement of summer flows may not be realized in areas where fog occurrence is a frequent source of significant moisture.”
http://www.fs.fed.us/psw/publications/ziemer/Ziemer90a.PDF
Some foresters though have queried; Are big trees mechanisms of rainfall interception and loss in a coastal redwood forest?
“Rainfall, throughfall, and stemflow were monitored at 5-min intervals for 3 years in a 120-year-old forest dominated by redwood (Sequoia sempervirens) and Douglas-fir (Pseudotsuga menziesii) at the Caspar Creek Experimental Watersheds, located in northwest California, USA. Of total annual rainfall, 22 percent is stored on foliage and stems and evaporates before reaching the ground. Comparison of the timing of rainfall and throughfall indicates that about 46% of the intercepted moisture is lost through post-storm evaporation from foliage and 54% is either evaporated during the storm or enters long-term storage in bark. In any case, loss rates remain high; over 15% even during the highest-intensity storms monitored. Clearcut logging in the area would increase effective annual rainfall by 20–30% due to reduction of interception loss, and most of the increase would occur during large storms, thus potentially influencing peakflows and hillslope pore-pressures during geomorphically significant events.”
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0022169409003850
Effective Annual Rainfall; How Is That For A Clearcut Rationale?
The reality of the effective rainfall might be floods, exacerbated erosion, whole hill sides moving downward, breaking homes and buildings as landslides. The carbon bound in construction materials goes to the landfill. And once the soil starts moving, there goes that carbon, exported offsite, and as GHG emissions.
But in identifying just how much water fog contributes to a forest ecosystem, the question of why more water runs off or out of watersheds than falls as precipitation is understood. “In a study conducted in Oregon's Bull Run watershed, Portland's primary water source, by the Portland Bureau of Water Works, where the annual rainfall is approximately forty inches while the average runoff is 135 inches.”
Fog drip contributed 35 percent of annual precipitation under the old growth canopy.
http://www.spruceroots.org/June01/Fog.html
Fog, Climate Change And Redwood Forests
Two chapters, 18 pages in total are listed in the publication: “The Proceedings of the Coast Redwood Forests in a Changing California: A Symposium for Scientists and Managers” (2011)
p 281 “Fog and Soil Weathering as Sources of Nutrients in a California Redwood Forest”
and;
p289 “Foliar Uptake of Fog in the Coast Redwood Ecosystem: a Novel Drought-Alleviation
Strategy Shared by Most Redwood Forest Plants”
This is the link to the “ Proceedings of the Coast Redwood Forests in a Changing California” full document – an indexed PDF nearly 700 pages and 15 MB.
http://www.fs.fed.us/psw/publications/documents/psw_gtr238/psw_gtr238.pdf
Another specific study, on understory ferns, was published in the American Journal Of Botany in 2010: “Polystichum munitum (Dryopteridaceae) Varies Geographically In Its Capacity To Absorb Fog Water By Foliar Uptake Within The Redwood Forest Ecosystem”
http://www.amjbot.org/content/97/7/1121.full
In the research paper, the authors state; “Fog provides a critical water resource to plants around the world. In the redwood forest ecosystem of northern California, plants depend on fog absorbed through foliar uptake to stay hydrated during the rainless summer. In this study, we identified regions within the redwood ecosystem where the fern Polystichum munitum canopy most effectively absorbs fog drip that reaches the forest floor.”
The team measured the foliar uptake capacity of P. munitum fronds at seven sites along 700 km of the redwood forest ecosystem and quantified the canopy cover of P. munitum at each site and estimated how much water the fern canopy can acquire aboveground through fog interception and absorption. Informative and technical, download as a PDF, 8 pages:
http://www.amjbot.org/content/97/7/1121.full.pdf
Growing Money On Trees – Carbon Counterfeit Currency
Silvicultural regimes, arbitrarily focus on estimated carbon accounting for offsets rather than natural assets. Managing forests for maximum sustained yield of water makes more sense.
Growing Carbon - Logging In Columns And Ledgers; An Asymptotic Arbitrary Algorithm
Throughout discussions on forest carbon management, estimates of carbon storage have several variables. Two formulated and related parameters are forest production, termed maximum sustained yield; and asymptotic carbon, an arbitrary algorithm balancing production and sustainable market places in a value added consumption based model where increased flow of forest products is seen as reducing GHG emissions of CO2.
As arbitrary as it is, it's just an updated version of tree (farm) crop rotations and forward looking harvest re-entry periods by return on investment. Not the investment in the forests specific to production. The return on investment globally, which can include new distribution centers and store locations for new overseas markets, driving the export of predicted increase production volume of sequestered carbon in the form of locally derived forest products.
The Sustainable Market Place, An Investment In Increased Production
Capital investment in local mill operations does not by itself necessarily mean 1) an increase in workers employed offsite of local timberland (forest) production units per every mmbft extracted from privately held commercial timberlands, or 2) increased sales-tax revenues within the county of origin for timber products sold through the MRC/MFP Distribution Center in Hawaii or Guam.
This is not a rhetorical question...
What is the difference between an arc, and a curve? “The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends towards righteousness.” Dr. Martin Luther King
A curve will bend toward management.
“All forests increase sequestration and storage of carbon with age. Managed forests do it on a curve.” Jae Fagan
Asymptotic Carbon Storage In Timber Products
The term asymptotic, is a mathematical concept, and means for any equation; 'approaching a value or curve arbitrarily closely - as in some sort of limit'. Asymptotic is an adjective meaning 'of a probability distribution as some variable or parameter of it goes to infinity.' In carbon forestry - one of the parameters is the rotation cycle, and a variable would be the yearly growth curve. Another variable in carbon forestry is the 'forest product' and it's relative decay time, or continued product sequestration of carbon over it's useful lifetime. The relative decay time is a function of the carbon fraction (heartwood ratio to sapwood) at the asymptote (nearest non-intersection of a curve and a straight line) of the harvest rotation period and product life-cycle or decay time. The product life-cycle assessment also may include the time to decompose in a landfill.
Context of the times - carbon accounting determines optimal ecosystem services. But the concept of ecosystem services, flows from intrinsic site-specific ecosystem functions.
Tree Farms Don't Cut It
And neither do carbon crops with 50 - 60 year crop rotations within Mendocino Redwood Company managed Sustainability Units of twenty year harvest periods (broken into four large spatially adjacent 5 year re-entry zones or harvest blocks) favoring continued applications of herbicides to promote commercial conifer release. This all leaves behind, forest recruitment scenarios and modeled token retention levels, averaged across the landscape of large woody debris on the forest floor and in the streams for wildlife needs. It leaves behind 80 year old trees greater than 24 inch diameter at breast height that supposedly supercede the structural characteristics of remnant Old Growth trees and are faster growing trees - but three per acre is plenty, any more than that may be harvested. Several !6 inch diameter trees are left for recruitment to be the next 24 inch trees on subsequent re-entries for harvest.
Clearcuts Are Recruitment Models For Late Seral Forest!
The Redwood is a dominant forest species which begins it's real growth in terms of volume per acre of high-quality commercial grade timber products at around 120 years of age with a volumetric growth curve that lasts beyond the age of three hundred years ... oops, the metric of “faster growing trees store more carbon” is exposed for the certified myth that it is.
The crux of the equation is in the flux of carbon:
1) Harvesting an old stand with a low or zero yield increment and replacing it with a young vigorous stand seems to make sense for mitigating climate change since the growth of the tree is a sign of carbon uptake. While that statement is true from a "flux" or "annual uptake" point of view, it's less certain when you think about carbon stocks. What is being done with the harvested carbon stock? Is it being burned in slash piles, turned into paper or solid-wood furniture? The amount of carbon stored in a 300 year old stand can be huge. To get back to the same carbon density per hectare could take 250 years or more.
2) From a carbon storage point of view, longer rotations result in more carbon stored per hectare. The carbon benefit of longer rotations though, is not due to the rate of uptake (which slows after 100-120 years of growth). The benefit is due to the storage in the biomass and relative balance of the annual turnover (litterfall and mortality) feeding the decomposition of dead wood into soil carbon. If a stand that has historically been disturbed every 350 years starts to be part of a thirty year rotation plan, there will be a lot of carbon dioxide (CO 2) released from the soil. Less carbon will be transferred from the living biomass to the dead wood and soil to maintain the carbon stocks on the site.
On the other hand, if a site has already been harvested and is part of a short-rotation system, it might be better to maintain the short-rotation there... and have the carbon stored as forest products, rather than shift an alternate older stand stand from long rotation to short rotation.
But wait, there's excitement when professionals speak of growing larger diameter trees faster!
The agitated growth response requires conifer release methods that employ poisons, and in Mendocino County, has left millions of dead standing trees in the forest. Unfortunately, assessing Redwood forest ecosystem carbon stocks on large private-held commercial timberlands employs accounting methods that generally consider only standing live trees and the longevity (or useful life cycle in years) of derived wood products for purposes of GHG carbon offsets.
Misconception: “Short rotation managed stands are better at carbon storage than un-managed stands.” This misconception hinges in part on the assumptions that carbon stored in deadwood and soils are inconsequential, and that decomposition is the same in managed and un-managed stands. These assumptions are not true. If the whole ecosystem is considered, there is more storage in the un-managed stands than in managed stands. The misconception also relies on estimates of carbon storage in wood products, landfills and avoided emissions, which have an uncertainty of more than 40% (several studies confirm this uncertainty).
https://www.for.gov.bc.ca/ftp/HET/external/!publish/Web/climate/Misconceptions.pdf
Is it just roshomon, comparing ecosystem functions and carbon equation functions?
From the time of initial planting, the time taken to reach asymptotic carbon storage decreases as the carbon crop timber harvest rotation period decreases, but increases almost linearly with increasing decay time of timber products. This result qualifies the short-term value of any particular planting strategy, leading to 50-60 year harvest cycles as an industry standard.
Carbon Storage Accounting: A Function Of Forest Growth, Rotation Period And The Useful Life-Cycle Of Timber Products
If the carbon retention curve for timber products from a given harvest (region/ownership) extends beyond the time of the next harvest, then carbon storage increases in successive rotations. In general, the total amount of carbon stored in a forest and its timber products at any time is the sum of the current forest growth curve and contributions from the retention curves of timber products not yet decayed and reconverted to carbon dioxide, from all previous rotations.
The computation of carbon storage during successive rotations becomes the weighted-average of the carbon retention curves of all timber products, and increases as the fraction (in the stored carbon equation) of felled timber used for products.
Heartwood is another consideration, known as the carbon fraction – the merchantable contribution or carbon density ratio of heartwood to cambium softwood in a tree bole, or branches, for residual decay equations of forest soils carbon content; and relative to decay and CO2 emissions – the useful life-cycle of forest products.
So the forest carbon growth curve, is not straightforward, because foresters need to include the variation of carbon density in living trees, induced by the change in harvest rotation periods. As the product decay time increases, the curve of asymptotic carbon storage, plotted against the harvest cycle or rotation time, develops a peak at some optimal rotation period. “The contribution to carbon stored in living trees from timber products increasingly dominates the equation and thus the mean annual increment has a maximum. At this limit, forest management for maximum sustained yield also ensures maximum carbon storage.”
Did you get that?
The Asymptote Of Maximum Sustained Yield Is A Clean, Green Tree Farm
What is the time frame for a tree, or a forest to reach maximum asymptotic carbon storage?
“It is simplest to model the average carbon retention curve with a decaying exponential: If the harvest rotation period, is increased indefinitely, carbon storage increases monotonically towards the total actual carbon content of living trees at maturity. Therefore, most carbon is stored when the forest is not harvested at all.” Basically, natural laws provide parameter sets for equations where the increasing storage rate remains unchanged and results in highest carbon sequestration during species maturity.
But the shift in materials for construction purposes would likely be more carbon intensive, and this is a form of leakage... a transfer of carbon GHG emissions and responsibility. Therefore, under the carbon-forestry approach, managed forests and the harvested trees and resulting timber products together, can store more carbon than un-managed forests alone. And so it is that management for maximum sustained yield of products is said to ensure maximum carbon storage.
But remember, the contribution to carbon stored in living trees from timber products increasingly dominates the equation which determines the mean annual increment 'plotted maximum'. At this short-rotation imposed parameter, forest management for maximum sustained yield also ensures maximum carbon storage to a sustainable marketplace, and predictable return on investments.
Point of clarification: 'return on investment' is not meant to denote a return on any forest investment, Beyond the purchase, forests are considered the cheapest carbon sequestration project investment with the highest yield. In the case of commercial timberland, the 'return on investment' is considered to be the return on investment funds (sourced) from the forest, and invested elsewhere, offsite, and may have nothing to do with forests or carbon sequestration. The investment can be used to seek a return on the purchase of a company or shares in a company in an unrelated industrial sector, or to build a storefront distribution center.
Forests Are Considered The Cheapest Carbon Sequestration Project Investment
“In regulatory programs, a cap-and-trade system sets a state, regional or national cap, or limit, on how many GHG emissions are permitted from regulated entities. Capped entities can meet their compliance obligation through emission allowances, auction or allocated to them by a governmental agency, or purchasing offsets from uncapped sectors. Forestry is considered an uncapped sector in compliance markets and IFM offsets can be created at lower costs compared to offsets from other sectors.”
http://www.uvm.edu/rsenr/wkeeton/pubpdfs/Kerchner%20and%20Keeton_2015_Forest%20Policy%20and%20Economics.pdf
New markets increase purchases of products supporting the flow offsite of carbon from short rotation tree farms, buoying the decay quantifier to balance the carbon equation.
For nature's sake, commercial products are a form of forest carbon that should not be calculated into 'standing, live tree carbon' assessments (under CCAR, CORE, REDD) for the sake of 'cap and trade' or the voluntary carbon offsets market.
Forest products are the commercial form of accrued carbon as the portion that is extracted by landowners. Benefits will come in time with less environmental damage per entry, higher value stumpage, and higher quality in products. Forest health should be a non-payable dividend, and not receivable as currency, with no exchange rate marketable as carbon offsets for pollution mitigation. Current certification systems, use carbon models that substantiate an increased flow of forest products to expanded markets based on manipulated landscape data fostering a carbon short-rotation tree-farm baseline.
Carbon Quality (CQ) also known as the heartwood to softwood ratio, is not used in commercial forest products carbon accounting, as the price of timber products must remain low enough to foster the flow of carbon exchange - Farmed Carbon at the Carbon Exchange!
Completely Arbitrary Methodology: Asymptotic Carbon Storage or Forest Health
Redwood decks, fencing, and furniture will not improve forest habitat for streams and rivers, the salmon, the flora and fauna, fog drip, nor groundwater and sub-basin aquifer recharge.
“However, the time taken to reach asymptotic carbon storage, while decreasing as the normal rotation period decreases, increases almost linearly with the average extended decay time of timber products. Because the asymptotic level of carbon storage in timber products is additional, the effect of converting production of a given forest to longer-lived products is to accumulate carbon at the same mean rate over a longer period of time than the harvest cycle.
By contrast, the effect of enhancing the growth rate of trees (conifer release, stocking) for a particular calculated parameter of products is to accumulate more carbon over a shorter period of time.”
But this is not “Additionality” under carbon law! CCAR v3.2 (CORE) (IFM)
Most commercial timberland “models of carbon storage do not incorporate the retention of carbon in detritus and soil organic matter. This contribution represents the largest pool of carbon in most temperate forest stands (Schlesinger 1977, Gholz and Fisher 1982, Cooper 1983) so that it is important to quantify the effects of harvesting on the storage of carbon in soils.” (from) Tree Physiology 6,417-428 0 1990 Heron Publishing-Victoria, Canada
A Model Of Carbon Storage In Forests And Forest Products;
Roderick C. Dewar; Institute of Terrestrial Ecology,
Bush Estate, Penicuik, Midlothian EH26 OQB, Scotland Received January 3, 1990
I feel personally, that one must go back in time, to baselines from when there were studies in Old Growth forests for answers to the Redwood Region's role in climate mitigation. Carbon accounting methods and algorithms have only adjusted the carbon storage asymptote formulated on short rotation productivity to continue the business as usual approach to expanding markets.
I think it can be said that Mendocino Redwood Company has no heart(wood).
Carbon Storage in Young Growth Coast Redwood Stands:
Carbon Fraction And Wood Density Of Coast Redwood
“As an expression of the carbon fraction, analysis of carbon fraction for the three wood types showed that heartwood was consistently higher in carbon than sapwood, and that mature heartwood was higher in carbon than juvenile heartwood samples.”
Coast redwood (Sequoia sempervirens) stands have the largest measured biomass per acre making the argument for use of the species in long-term carbon sequestration projects self evident. Forest Service Pacific Southwest Research tested the applicability of the current forest carbon project protocols set out by the Climate Action Reserve for forest carbon credit projects within California. In April 2012, the U.S. Department of Agriculture Forest Service Pacific Southwest Research Station Albany, California presented a research paper at the UC Santa Cruz symposium: GENERAL TECHNICAL REPORT PSW-GTR-238;
“Near Fort Bragg, California tree cores were collected from coast redwood stands located at Railroad Gulch on Jackson Demonstration State Forest. Redwood stands at this location regenerated naturally from stump sprouts and from seedlings planted after removal of the old growth stands around 1920 (Jackson 1991). Sample trees were randomly selected from a database created in 1982 when Railroad Gulch was divided into 14 contiguous blocks. A total of 42 trees were selected ranging in age from 23 to 87 years, ranging in breast height diameter from 13 to 86 cm (5 - 34.5 inches) and ranging in height from 5 to 45 m (16 - 148 feet)”
“Two cores were taken perpendicularly to the bole axis at a 45 degree angle to slope aspect on opposite sides of sample trees. The increment corer was cleaned between trees to avoid contamination. A subset of four trees were selected for additional core extractions taken from halfway between base of live crown, at live crown and halfway between tree top and live crown. These cores were used for analysis of vertical variation in wood density. Cores were then placed in straws, sealed and labeled.”
“Ten cores for paired carbon and density analysis were cut in half lengthwise and divided up into three categories: 1) juvenile heartwood (first seven growth rings from pith); 2) mature heartwood (three growth rings away from sapwood heartwood boundary and showing no curvature of the growth rings); and 3) sapwood (determined by color). This resulted in 30 samples analyzed for density (10 of each wood type) with corresponding halves of segments analyzed for carbon. Ninety-six additional core segments were selected strictly for carbon analysis, however, these samples were not cut in half.”
“Wood density was significantly different for sapwood found above the live crown (ALC) versus below live crown (BLC) but not significantly different for heartwood by location in tree or between juvenile and mature heartwood.”
(See core sample image)
“Differences in wood characteristics such as density, shearing strength and extractive content between old-growth redwood and young growth redwood (Resch and Arganbright 1968), make extrapolation of the values from this study to old-growth redwood inadvisable. The higher extractive content in old-growth redwood would most likely result in higher carbon fraction of the stem compared to young growth as extractives can be made up of as much as 66 percent carbon (Resch and Arganbright 1968).”
It is often said, “half the weight of a tree is carbon” but there, you see key wording...
weight, carbon, tree. It's a weighted average of the carbon density with several key variables and a 40 percent margin for error. But globally, the general rule of thumb is point 50.
“It is known that hardwoods have carbon fractions that are typically lower than 0.50 (Lamlom and Savidge 2003) and therefore utilizing a default value of 0.50 for estimates of hardwood tree carbon will systematically overestimate the amount of carbon contained within many hardwood species The overall measured mean of carbon fraction in young growth redwood is significantly greater than the 0.50 value that is often used for trees.”
GENERAL TECHNICAL REPORT PSW-GTR-238
Carbon Storage in Young Growth Coast Redwood Stands
The Anatomy Of Sources And Sinks At The Stand And Landscape Level
A forest ecosystem acts as a "sink" (a net removal of atmospheric CO2) when there is an increase in the sum of all carbon stocks retained in the forest vegetation itself and the derived stocks of organic carbon in other reservoirs. The most important of these derived reservoirs are the detritus and soil organic matter pools of the forest ecosystem.
At the landscape (or biome) scale, a forest is a mosaic of many stands of trees (individual ecosystems) in various stages of development. The net carbon balance at this scale is the summation across all such ecosystems in the landscape.
Changes in the net carbon accumulation at the landscape scale have two components: changes in the productivity of the individual ecosystems with environmental variations (soils, humus) and the changes in the age-class distribution associated with landscape variation in mortality and recruitment.
Forests, The Global Carbon Cycle And Climate Change
http://www.fao.org/docrep/ARTICLE/WFC/XII/MS14-E.HTM
“Landscape sources and sinks of atmospheric carbon can arise from changes in ecosystem productivity or from changes in the disturbance regime. If the disturbance rates increase, the age-class distribution shifts to younger stands and the total carbon retained in the ecosystems in the landscape decreases - the landscape is a transient net source of CO2 to the atmosphere until a new stable age-class distribution is reached.”
“If carbon is transported out of the ecosystem landscape to decompose in off-site reservoirs, such as forest products, the landscape source is reduced by that amount - in essence this component of the source is exported. Similarly, if disturbances are suppressed, the distributions shift to the right older forest stands and carbon stocks increase with a transient net removal of CO2 from the atmosphere.”
The Source And Sink Dilemma
“The trade of forest products results in a spatial displacement of the source component (at the site of the decomposing product) relative to a comparable sink component (in the forest ecosystem). The carbon contained in forest products makes a small, and manageable, contribution to the global carbon balance.”
“Globally, the net effect on atmospheric concentration is negligible unless the rate of decomposition in the geographically displaced product pools is different from that in the forest ecosystem from which it was removed. Controlling these rates through wise management, however, can offer some degree of mitigation of the increases in atmospheric CO2.”
Mitigation Of The Increases
That's all we get. The mitigation only applies to any increases due to changes in the plotted asymptotic carbon values. The forest carbon offset marketplace is consumer-product oriented. The short-rotation carbon-decay curve and plotted exchange rates diminish the intrinsic value of forest ecosystem functions, and reduce actual sequestration within the forest ecosystems by exporting the future health of the forest as softwood cambium carbon pools, in repeated perturbations as peak carbon flux events.
Final words....
Tree Growth Never Slows - 15 January 2014
http://www.nature.com/news/tree-growth-never-slows-1.14536
Scientific literature is full of studies that focus on forests' initial growth and their gradual move towards a plateau in the amount of carbon they store as they reach maturity. Researchers have also documented a reduction in growth at the level of individual leaves in older trees.
In this recently published study, “it was found that the trees that are adding the most mass are the biggest ones, and that holds pretty much everywhere on Earth that we looked, quoting Nathan Stephenson, an ecologist at the US Geological Survey in Three Rivers, California, and the first author of the study. He and his colleagues analyzed reams of data on 673,046 trees from 403 species in monitored forest plots, in both tropical and temperate areas around the world. They found that the largest trees gained the most mass each year in 97% of the species, capitalizing on their additional leaves and adding ever more girth high in the sky.”
Although they relied mostly on existing data, the team calculated growth rates at the level of the individual trees, whereas earlier studies had typically looked at the overall carbon stored in a plot. The researchers' calculations consistently showed that larger trees added the most mass. In one old-growth forest plot in the western United States, trees larger than 48 inches in diameter (at breast height) comprised just 6% of trees, but accounted for 33% of the growth.
The findings build on a detailed case study published in 2010, which showed similar growth trends for two of the world’s tallest trees, the coast redwood (Sequoia sempervirens) and the eucalyptus (Eucalyptus regnans), both of which can grow well past 300 feet in height.
“The results are consistent with the known reduction in growth at the leaf level as trees age. Although individual leaves may be less efficient, older trees have more of them. And in older forests, fewer large trees dominate growth trends until they are eventually brought down by a combination of fungi, fires, wind and gravity; the rate of carbon accumulation depends on forest turn over.”
“It’s the geometric reality of tree growth: bigger trees have more leaves, and they have more surface across which wood carbon is deposited. Younger trees may grow faster on a relative scale, meaning that they take less time double in size, but on an absolute scale, the old trees keep growing far more.”
And old trees can, as part of a forest ecosystem, sequester far more carbon, and produce higher stumpage, higher employment, higher timber tax yields, higher carbon quality forest products, and at the same time provide prodigious amounts of more cool water in the rivers, more fish, etc., etc., etc.
The effective climate mitigation potential of the redwood forests is not in short-rotation carbon product storage and Home-Depot shoppers, but onsite in the forest. Redwood forests also hold another, perhaps bigger climate mitigation potential - water. Instream flows, increased fish counts, healthy viable populations of flora and fauna.
Mendocino County's second growth forests can be better managed. Which begs the question, better than what?
These following links are representative of the current state of the forests and concerns in Mendocino County which range from increased danger of timberland wildfires and the rural public's safety, herbicide applications, the health and productivity of the forests, and millions of dead standing trees left onsite by the Mendocino Redwood Company, the largest private timberland owner in Mendocino County. MRC timberland managers state publicly there is no increased fire danger.... View the 7 minute film, it's unsettling in scope and scale.
From The Lorax Library Archives: Santa Rosa Press Democrat 2010 the following...
“David Bischel, president of the California Forestry Association, representing timber harvesters and processors, said the new rules, known as the Forest Protocol, help to monetize an important environmental benefit by encouraging more standing timber in the forests and more wood products used by society.”
“Early drafts of the protocol, dating back to 2007, did not permit clear cutting, said Jeff Shellito, an environmental consultant and former aide to state Sen. Byron Sher of Palo Alto, now retired. In 2002, Sher authored legislation that established forest-preservation standards for California’s then-voluntary carbon market.”
“We went to great pains to ensure you couldn’t get carbon credits from clear cutting,” Shellito said. But five years later, the timber industry began lobbying to alter the protocol in its favor. A nonprofit organization, the Climate Action Reserve (CAR, CCAR), which was created to establish standards for the verification of greenhouse gas emissions and reductions, is the primary author of the new rules.”
47 environmental and conservation groups, including the Sierra Club California and the Center for Biological Diversity, protested to the California Air Resources Board. “Mary Nichols, chairwoman of the Air Resources Board, said California already has the strictest timber standards in the nation and is considering adding provisions to explicitly discourage clear-cut practices from obtaining carbon credits.”
http://www.pressdemocrat.com/article/20101215/ARTICLES/101219664/1350?p=1&tc=pg
Reality check number 48....
The Society Of American Foresters - Western Forests Oct 2014 has this to say:
“Carbon sequestration in forests has been identified as one of the options for reducing CO2 concentrations in the atmosphere. The relative magnitudes of CO2 emissions from forest cover change and CO2 emissions from fossil fuel combustion would indicate that we are not going to solve the fossil fuel emissions problem by growing more forests on more acres, at least here in the US.”
http://www.forestry.org/media/docs/westernforester/2014/WFSeptOct14.pdf
Private corporate industrial commercial timberlands in Mendocino County do not have the standing timber volume inventory to merit carbon sequestration offsets accreditation. Mendocino Redwood Company should not be paid a green certified cent by large scale industrial polluters to ship the remaining redwood forests to markets overseas for carbon offsets.
Decks, and fencing, and picnic tables, oh my!
Decks, and fencing, and picnic tables, oh my!
Follow the yellow brick road to gold.
Follow this link to a 7 minute video (Google Earth) of “Dead Standing Trees” with landscape scale narration and detail both in the overview, and overlay of timber harvest plans by date, and acreage, outlining THP plan areas and dead standing trees on Mendocino Redwood Company owned timberlands in Mendocino County. Published March/April 2015.
https://www.hightail.com/download/UlRSQndFdGoyWGV5VmNUQw
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Tomas DiFiore
Carbon Offsets, carbon sequestration, Climate Mitigation, Coastal Redwood Forests, redwood decks, timberlands in Mendocino County,
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