Bad news folks. A new study, the largest of its kind ever undertaken is upending conventional wisdom on the world’s forests. Because of deforestation of the understory layers of our world’s forests, they’re no longer acting as carbon sinks. I have to assume this new data will reshuffle the forecast and the timetable for climate change. In a sane world, it would also change the way our Forest Service and other government agencies think about and regulate logging, but I doubt that will happen.
It makes sense. When seen from above, many of these forests look strong, but under the tallest trees a different picture has been allowed to develop, and without the understory layers, the forests can’t act in the way they should to dissipate carbon.
In my view this is an extremely frightening development that should be a global alarm to halt logging, empower indigenous groups and environmentalists looking to preserve habitat, and undermine forest agencies that have told us they can manage these zones sustainably. We never should have trusted these agencies, and now their pro business brand of faux environmentalism has turned our global carbon bank into a dangerous problem. We should be planting trees, not building more roads and infrastructure. Read the last sentence below and despair.
The world’s tropical forests are so degraded they have become a source rather than a sink of carbon emissions, according to a new study that highlights the urgent need to protect and restore the Amazon and similar regions.
Researchers found that forest areas in South America, Africa and Asia – which have until recently played a key role in absorbing greenhouse gases – are now releasing 425 teragrams of carbon annually, which is more than all the traffic in the United States.
www.theguardian.com/...