A unit of Lasting Forests evolving since March 30, 1999
A Total Forest Management Plan and Wildland Management Decision Support System
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Atmospheric Carbon Storage
Notes on Carbon Credits for a Carbon Market

Under development:

Carbon sequestration = storage, accumulation, sink

Global warming and air quality laws have resulted in world wide efforts to reduce human-produced carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. (To slow the green-house phenomenon effects.) It is related to CO and other gasses but C0₂ is the index or readily-estimated unit of interest. Society has driven C0₂ levels to the highest levels in the past 200,000 years.

Each corporation is assigned a maximum amount of carbon which they may emit. If they cannot achieve that level (called a cap) or a lesser level, they may be penalized. There may be many reasons for not reducing emissions such as a delay in replacing equipment that has lower emissions. When they produce an excess, rather than pay a penalty, a corporation may buy carbon credits to bring their carbon into line. They are paying someone else to store an equivalent to what they would have released to the atmosphere. Someone else sequesters carbon, stores it, and on demand, sells that "warehouse space" to corporations in need.

Off-sets to carbon being delivered to the atmosphere as C0₂ are sold in units of one ton (tonne?) of substance equivalent to 1 ton of C0₂.

A Chicago carbon credit exchange has formed. The Mountain Association for Community Economic Development (MACED) (433 Chestnut Street, Berea, KY 40403; 859-986-2373) provides a forest certification program and sale of carbon credits to the Exchange. Financial benefits are shared with land owners, MACED, assistants (e.g., for forest inventory) and consultants.

The sellers, perhaps Rural System land owners or affiliates, develop a carbon-storage-for-profit strategy that includes:

1. Standing forests and their annual growth
2. Maintained old growth only on medium productivity sites where very high standing carbon inventories are present.
3. Old growth timber (amounts with transition dynamics estimated, including harvest and community destruction)
4. Managed sites. (Carefully managed high- productivity sites can be frequently harvested, recycling carbon indefinately.)
5. Maintain old growth stands on poor productivity sites (Low productivity sites cannot displace enough fossil fuel to overcome the loss of forest-sequestered carbon to the atmosphere from harvested old growth stands.)
6. Maximize standing biomass/area (rarely old growth) on steep and unproductive-of-commercial-wood sites for carbon storage, watershed benefits, visual amenities, and wildlife.
7. Forest litter
8. Total biomass inventory of farm including structures
9. Pond zones (minimal, but notable over 50 ponds and wetland areas)
10. Pasture (annual, with rest-rotation emphasis)
11. Soil (site-specific (alpha unit) and dynamic carbon content of all soils on an ownership
12. Potential storage estimate (alpha unit site specific; dry tonnes/ha/year )
13. Create and maintain poplar forest plantations and agrofroests for energy (fossil fuel displacement) on high-tree-productivity and high-crop-risk cleared land
14. Preserve bogs and "spring-seep" areas (compute volumes)
15. Promote campaign against anglers'-earthworm disposal (which results in northern bog destruction)
16. Create under-canopy headwater dams and behind them organic storage (pseudo-bogs) from litter, flat logging tops, etc.
17. Use select sites for corporate carbon-waste-stream disposal (monitor with ecorods)

Journal of Forestry being abstracted for Koyoto Protocol concepts on carbon sequestration.

Comments to:Terry Seyden, (email 9-25-2000)by Jack Ranney. Studies on the role of old growth forests strictly in carbon sequestion and release were made about 6 years ago at Oak Ridge National Laboratory by Marland, Post, King, and others in DOE's Biofuel Feedstock Development Program at ORNL. There has been assumed a steady-state for carbon in old growth forests. The amount of carbon existing in inventory in land classified as "old growth forest" (sequestered in plants and soil ) would go back to the atmosphere with harvest. That could be estimated by the potential productivity of a site in dry tonnes per hectare per year. The same trees that are functioning (growing and sequestering carbon) are also growing fuel for replacing fossil fuels. Carefully managed high productivity sites could be frequently harvested to displace limited amounts of fossil fuel indefinately. The economic balance between wood for fuel and wood for the financial returns from carbon credits needs to be resolved. As fuel, carbon is released; as lumber or structure wood, carbon is only partially released. Credits are lost and owners penalized when trees are cut and removed; growth on remaining trees can be enhanced by thinning, fertilizer, etc. A careful economic analysis, including that of using managed forest wood for firewood needs to be conducted. The benefits of growing trees for biofuel energy seems to outweigh those for producing carbon credits, but this needs further study, especially in combination within a large managed forest. Low site-index sites and advanced old growth sites to be harvested need special analyses about the next state of the wood.

As currently understood (2008), the conclusions are (again strictly from a carbon standpoint)

Initiate plantations (or young forests) for energy (fossil fuel displacement) on high productivity land already cleared (e.g., agricultural land, especially those subject to high risks to food crops but not so much for trees - example flood plains of Mississippi River now in agriculture),

Avoid harvesting old growth stands on medium productivity sites where very high standing carbon inventories are present.

Online journal of Nature 9/25/08 reported that old growth forests store more carbon dioxide from the atmosphere than they release. This is true in most forests 15 to 800 years old. The total is 1 billion metric tons a year, about 10 percent of the carbon uptake worldwide. Most trees after 15 years old absorb more carbon dioxide than they release. They are net carbon sinks.

Of course there are other considerations for old growth. But the total carbon perspective is needed to understand the role of forest preservation as a carbon sequestration policy.

Peat Bogs

The activity of a single enzyme, phenol oxidase, in peat bogs from Scotland to Siberia is the only thing preventing a massive release of the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide, says a British scientist. But global warming could transform it from a planet-saver to a planet-wrecker, warns Chris Freeman, a biologist at the University of Wales, Bangor and discoverer of the crucial role of the enzyme.

Peat bogs in northern latitudes contain an estimated 455 billion tonnes of carbon in the form of buried plant matter - equivalent to 70 years of industrial emissions. Many climate models predict that global warming will cause peat bogs to dry out. If so, says Freeman, there would be a catastrophic release of CO2, sending temperatures soaring yet further.

Scientists have been unclear why buried plants inside wet bogs do not decompose. Now Freeman and his colleagues have revealed that phenol oxidase is the key. In a wet bog, the enzyme is largely inert and the phenolic compounds it would otherwise destroy can build up. These compounds prevent bacteria from decomposing the organic material. But if the bog dries out, the enzyme activates and destroys the phenolic compounds, triggering decomposition.

In 2004 it was reported that many species of earthworms (baits used by anglers) have been released in northern areas and they are rapidly consuming forest litter and converting it to organic soil materials (compost). There are few native earthworms in northern forests. The decline in the so-called litter layer is now evident. Restoring natural conditions now seems impossible.

Rural System Staff have created" mini-bogs" to favor unusual plants and animals. These are mini-ecosystems. In damp soil areas they dug holes the depth and dimension of 2-4 bales of peat and dropped in the bales purchased from garden stores (sold as mulch). The bales soon were moist and grew sphagnum and favored certain local plants as well as insectivorous plants acquired for display and education.

References

Giles, R.H., Jr. 2002. Land use, land-use change, and forestry. A special report of the IPCC. Based on a session held in Bonn, Germany, 2-12 1998. edited by Robert T. Watson, Ian R. Noble, Bert Bolin, N.H. Ravindranath, David J. Verardo, and David J. Dokken, (2000). Published for the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, Geneva (Switzerland), by Cambridge University Press, Cambridge and New York ix+377pp ill.. Book Review, Quarterly Review of Biology 77(2):224-225.

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This Web site is maintained by R. H. Giles, Jr.
Last revision January 17, 2000.