[counting dancing angels on the head of a pin~cr]
SJ & JESSIE E. NATURAL RESOURCES COLLEGES, UTAH STATE UNIVERSITY
CREDIT: JAMES ST. JOHN
Having a firm estimate of how much carbon forests can take from the atmosphere is essential to global accounting for climate change — leaders are relying on forests to pull some of the man-made carbon back to earth. But in reality, the ability of forests to sequester carbon is not as simple as it may appear on paper. In a new study synthesizingJustin DeRose from Department of Wildland Resources and colleagues from across North America have proposed an alternative strategy to combat the uncertainty in calculating the carbon that forests can sequester, using tree ring data from forest census plots.
Oceans, land and forests are ‘carbon sinks’ – they are capable of drawing more carbon from the atmosphere than they take in. The countries of the world depend on their carbon sink counts to achieve net zero emissions. But the complex and sophisticated ecology of these systems remains somewhat unpredictable. Questions remain about how exactly forests will respond to climate change and how to calculate what forests can do to help balance the carbon account.
Traditionally, the total amount of carbon released to the atmosphere by traditional carbon sinks has been estimated indirectly, by calculating the difference between anthropogenic emissions, the amount of carbon in the world’s oceans, and the amount of carbon in the world’s oceans. world and concentration of CO in the atmosphere.2. Supplementing that indirect calculation with data from existing (and future) tree ring collections could provide a direct, terrestrial record of how much carbon is captured from trees and forests, says DeRose. individually, with the specific characteristic of an annual timestamp. And from there, the researchers were able to scale it up to estimate forest-wide and continent-wide carbon savings. Some existing tree-ring data from recent inventories exist, but further research is needed to interpret what this data provides when applied to carbon sequestration. For such a system to work, says DeRose, several things first need to happen.
Tree ring samples, along with associated forest data collection, can be collected nationally by efforts such as the US Forest Inventory and Analysis Program. The goal of these programs has historically been to understand forest change, but they are a perfect tool to help answer questions about carbon systems and climate. Although core samples were collected during several inventories, continuing to collect them in all forests would require a concerted effort.
“We needed to reorganize, with a more cohesive, forward-looking approach, on a national, continental and global scale,” DeRose said.
The tree ring data collected from these forest inventories provides a wealth of tree and lot-level information, says DeRose. The construction of a large-scale, systematic tree-ring pattern can produce records of tree growth in space and time, from microsystems to macrosystems and from years to centuries, with many additional details to identify human- and environmental-influenced growth drivers.
“Adding tree ring data to the carbon equation will provide a richer, more nuanced perspective on how forests are responding to a changing climate system,” he said.
The authors of the review made the case for sampling tree rings in forest inventories across North America to gather important data to quantify and understand how forests are changing and how they can be how much carbon it contains as the world continues to fight global climate change.
JOURNEYS
BioScience
DOI
RESEARCH METHODS
Data analysis / statistics
RESEARCH SUBJECTS
Do not apply
ARTICLE TITLE
Adding Tree Rings to the North American National Forest Inventory: An essential tool to guide atmospheric CO2 reduction
ARTICLE PUBLICATION DATE
December 8, 2021
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