• About
    • Which Energy Mix is this?
  • Climate News Network Archive
  • Contact
Celebrating our 1,000th edition. The climate news you need
No Result
View All Result
The Energy Mix
  • Canada
  • UK & Europe
  • Fossil Fuels
  • Ending Emissions
  • Community Climate Finance
  • Clean Electricity Grid
  • Cities & Communities
SUBSCRIBE
DONATE
  • Canada
  • UK & Europe
  • Fossil Fuels
  • Ending Emissions
  • Community Climate Finance
  • Clean Electricity Grid
  • Cities & Communities
SUBSCRIBE
DONATE
No Result
View All Result
The Energy Mix
No Result
View All Result
  FEATURED
BREAKING: UN Nature Summit, the ‘Paris Conference for Biodiversity’, Moves to Montreal in December June 19, 2022
‘LET’S SUE BIG OIL’: Legal Team Launches Class Action Campaign for B.C. Municipalities June 17, 2022
‘It Could Have Been Any of Us’, Colleague Says, After Brazil Confirms Murders of Bruno Pereira, Dom Phillips June 17, 2022
Infrastructure Gap a ‘Life and Death’ Matter as Northern Canada Warms June 17, 2022
Ban Fossil Fuel Ads Like Tobacco Promos, Doctors Urge Ottawa June 10, 2022
Next
Prev
Home Climate News Network

Dramatic acceleration in loss of wild forest

January 25, 2017
Reading time: 4 minutes
Primary Author: Tim Radford

A forest in Laos

A forest in Laos

 

Almost 1 million square kilometres of natural forest disappeared between the year 2000 and 2013, along with its ability to absorb carbon and reduce warming.

LONDON, 25 January, 2017 – Here is how to turn a forest into a carbon-consuming machine that will help contain global warming. Leave it alone. Let it grow. Do not log it. It will sequester only so much carbon, but there are sure to be other benefits, according to some fresh thinking by a distinguished plant ecologist.

And is the world listening? Probably not. The planet’s stock of natural wild woodland – the technical term is intact forest landscape – which protects biodiversity, stores carbon and manages the water supply, is dwindling.

A new study calculates that the area of intact forest landscape shrank over the first 13 years of this century by almost 1 million square kilometres, and the rate of loss has accelerated dramatically in the most recent three years.

Research such as this is vital because, although the most visible attempts to reduce global warming and mitigate climate change depend on lowering greenhouse gas emissions from fossil fuel combustion, there is another, parallel, approach: to limit the emissions that spring from land use change, chiefly by preserving natural forests.

Forest carbon

Christian Körner of the University of Basel in Switzerland argues in the journal Science that forest trees will sequester more atmospheric carbon than they release only while they stay alive.

Trees may grow faster in response to rising temperatures and the fertilising stimulus of more available carbon dioxide, but if the lifespan shrinks as a consequence, any gain will be shortlived.

So commercial plantations are not the answer. He and colleagues at Basel have already demonstrated that mature forests are intricate vegetable co-operatives that have devised intricate ways of sharing resources and managing nutrients.

Other studies have separately confirmed that old forest giants paradoxically store more carbon than young, fast-growing competitors, and that natural, highly diverse woodland is a better instrument for atmospheric carbon absorption.

“The most effective way to enhance forest carbon storage,” Professor Körner writes, “is to prevent logging old-growth forests and to extend the forested land area. Once these new forests reach their storage capacity, they will not sequester additional carbon, irrespective of how fast trees grow and turn over carbon.”

“Intactness is hard to gain … That is why
intact landscapes should be treated as having
high (or even the highest) conservation value”

So to contain global warming, natural forests must be protected. But forest is being lost: burned, felled, or cleared for farmland or mineral extraction.

Scientists from the US, Russia, Germany and Canada report in Science Advances that they used satellite data to monitor changes from 2000 to 2013 in intact forest landscape.

They define this as “a seamless mosaic of forests and associated natural treeless ecosystems that exhibit no remotely detected signs of human activity or habitat fragmentation and are large enough to maintain all native biological diversity, including viable populations of wide-ranging species”.

And they found that these landscapes dwindled by 919,000 square kilometres over the first 13 years of this century. Altogether, at the beginning of the century, 65 countries could boast these intact forest landscapes.

Russia surrendered 179,000 sq km, Brazil 157,000 sq km and Canada 142,000 sq km: this alone added up to 52% of the total. Romania lost all its intact landscapes; Paraguay 79% of them.

Rate of loss

And, the scientists warn, if this rate of loss continues, Paraguay, Laos, Cambodia and Equatorial Guinea will lose all their intact forest landscapes within the next 20 years.

Logging was the principal agency of loss, and farming expansion came second. Palm oil plantation accounted for just 0.2% of the total loss. Fires linked to human action accounted for 21%. In Australia, 64% of loss could be linked to gold and other mineral exploitation.

The authors warn that the density of stored carbon in tropical climates was far greater in these intact forest landscapes than in the rest of the forest zone.

But these same intact landscapes can be “reduced very rapidly, in a matter of months and years, by increased fragmentation and access, even without changes in tree canopy cover.

“On the other hand, intactness is hard to gain, at least within a short time span. That is why intact landscapes should be treated as having high (or even the highest) conservation value.” – Climate News Network



in Climate News Network

The latest climate news and analysis, direct to your inbox

Subscribe

Related Posts

stux / Pixabay
Air & Marine

Big Seven European Airlines Lag on Reducing Sky-High Emissions: Report

June 13, 2022
68
Ars Electronica/flickr
Solar

Unique ‘Smartflower’ Microgrid to Power Saskatchewan High School

June 13, 2022
150
http://midwestenergynews.com/2013/10/24/as-pipeline-concerns-mount-a-renewed-focus-on-the-great-lakes-enbridge-mackinac-line-5/
Pipelines / Rail Transport

Line 5 Closure Brings Negligible Rise in Gas Prices, Enbridge Consultant Finds

June 10, 2022
201

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

I agree to the Terms & Conditions and Privacy Policy.

Trending Stories

The federal government's Cliff Street Power Plant is at the centre of Ottawa's plans to reduce natural gas demand. Photo: PWGSC

EXCLUSIVE: Ontario Regulator Refuses New Pipeline, Tells Enbridge to Plan for Lower Gas Demand

May 30, 2022
5.1k
Jason Woodhead/Flickr

Trans Mountain Pipeline On Track to Lose $600 Million, Parliamentary Budget Officer Finds

June 24, 2022
312
Ben_Kerckx/Pixabay

Plastics Cited as ‘Fossil Industry’s Plan B’ as Guilbeault Announces Partial Ban

June 24, 2022
193
Bruce Reeve/Flickr

Opinion: Ontario’s New ‘Carbon Tax’ Looks Like the One Doug Ford Fought

June 7, 2022
1.6k
zephylwer0/pixabay

North American Steel, Aluminium Giants Lumber Toward Green Transition

June 24, 2022
164
Michael and Diane Weidner/Unsplash

Scientists, Politicians Debate Ethics of ‘Climate Tinkering’

June 7, 2022
72

Recent Posts

Erik Whalen/wikimedia commons

Yellowstone Park Reopens, But Flood Recovery Could Take Years, Cost Billions

June 24, 2022
73
TAFE SA TONSLEY/Flickr

Clean Energy Investment to Exceed $1.4T This Year, Still Falls Short of Climate Goals: IEA

June 24, 2022
93
Nemaska Lithium/Facebook

Critical Minerals, Hydrogen Lead Ottawa’s Low-Carbon Industry Strategy

June 24, 2022
79
Cjp24/Wikimedia Commons

UK Green Shift Won’t Repeat Job Destruction of Deindustrialization, Report Finds

June 24, 2022
36
/PxFul

Canadian Farmers Offer Ottawa a Roadmap to Cut Agriculture Emissions

June 24, 2022
92
Pavlofox/Pixabay

Millions Face Famine as Climate Disasters, Ukraine War Slash Food Supplies

June 24, 2022
48
Next Post
Fire on the Funny River

Trump seeks to gag US scientists

The Energy Mix

Copyright 2022 © Smarter Shift Inc. and Energy Mix Productions Inc. All rights reserved.

Navigate Site

  • About
  • Contact
  • Privacy Policy and Copyright
  • Cookie Policy

Follow Us

No Result
View All Result
  • Canada
  • UK & Europe
  • Fossil Fuels
  • Ending Emissions
  • Community Climate Finance
  • Clean Electricity Grid
  • Cities & Communities

Copyright 2022 © Smarter Shift Inc. and Energy Mix Productions Inc. All rights reserved.

Manage Cookie Consent
To provide the best experiences, we use technologies like cookies to store and/or access device information. Consenting to these technologies will allow us to process data such as browsing behaviour or unique IDs on this site. Not consenting or withdrawing consent, may adversely affect certain features and functions.
Functional Always active
The technical storage or access is strictly necessary for the legitimate purpose of enabling the use of a specific service explicitly requested by the subscriber or user, or for the sole purpose of carrying out the transmission of a communication over an electronic communications network.
Preferences
The technical storage or access is necessary for the legitimate purpose of storing preferences that are not requested by the subscriber or user.
Statistics
The technical storage or access that is used exclusively for statistical purposes. The technical storage or access that is used exclusively for anonymous statistical purposes. Without a subpoena, voluntary compliance on the part of your Internet Service Provider, or additional records from a third party, information stored or retrieved for this purpose alone cannot usually be used to identify you.
Marketing
The technical storage or access is required to create user profiles to send advertising, or to track the user on a website or across several websites for similar marketing purposes.
Manage options Manage services Manage vendors Read more about these purposes
View preferences
{title} {title} {title}