Plants take up atmospheric CO2, reduce it, and employ the reduced forms for energy and structural needs. The leakage back into the atmosphere by oxidation begins as soon as the CO2 is removed. Much is quickly released as the plant metabolizes the sugars made during the day to keep its metabolism going at night, but even carbon locked in structural components steadily leaks back into the atmosphere. Leaves last days or months before surrendering their carbon back to the atmosphere. Branches and stems decay over weeks to years. Even the largest boles eventually oxidize away, returning all of their carbon to the air. The transience of the organic carbon pool needs to be recognized.
Carbon reduced by photosynthesis is fated to return to the atmosphere, but due to natural aberrations, that was sometimes delayed. That resulted in large sinks of reduced carbon being sequestered as coal, oil and natural gas. As long as free oxygen exists, that carbon will all return to the oxidized state, but anything that diminishes their extraction will slow their return to the atmospheric CO2 pool. Attempts to decrease global CO2 levels certainly need to focus on reducing extraction of fossil carbon, but delaying the oxidation of biologic carbon also helps.
One way that can be achieved is by removing organic carbon from the natural cycle of growth and decay. Decay is a natural and irresistible process, but if the masses of reduced carbon, otherwise known as wood, are turned into manufactured products, that carbon can remain sequestered far longer than it could in standing trees. After all, our houses and barns are masses of sequestered carbon. Every piece of wooden furniture and each conventional book is a mass of sequestered carbon that can persist for centuries beyond what its original tree could have managed.
The conversion of large trees into “wood products” is a sustainable way to keep carbon sequestered beyond the life of the tree, and once those large trees are removed, space is made for new trees that can then sequester even more atmospheric carbon.
Even the waste from producing wood products can reduce atmospheric CO2. Converted to stove wood, wood pellets or biomass, it can reduce the consumption of extracted fuels, leaving fossil carbon safely sequestered in the Earth.
There are many reasons to value and preserve forests, but if your aim is to slow CO2-driven global warming, limiting timber harvests is a poor strategy. Instead, removal of wood, especially of large, old trees, should be a fundamental element of environmentally responsible forest management.
Granted, there are a few aspects of current forest management practice that should be reconsidered:
Production of “commercially important species” should be de-emphasized. All species contribute to a forest. With appropriate utilization, there is no such thing as a “trash species.”
There shouldn’t be selective removal of “damaged and deformed trees.” These provide habitat niches for innumerable species. Healthy forests host many unhealthy trees. Disease and insect damage encourage biodiversity. Eliminating them is counterproductive to maintaining healthy ecosystems.
Management practices should not facilitate recreational use of forests. Making forests too inviting to the general public only accelerates the declines in wildlife associated with human activities.
Minimize “planting.” Relying upon natural recruitment preserves the local dendric germ-plasm, and that genetic diversity is crucial for environmental resilience.
Trees are marvelous organisms, and wood is one of the most versatile products on Earth. Harvesting trees is no different from hunting or fishing. Considering the ubiquity of wood in our lives, restricting timber harvests in Massachusetts leaves only two alternatives: import wood from other areas, which often exports problems to a developing world which lacks the resources to manage their resources in environmentally sustainable ways, or else substitute other materials for wood. Since, as the engineers say, “If it can’t be grown, it must be mined,” that strategy exacerbates global environmental problems associated with extractive industries.
The state forests of Massachusetts are a resource that should be used for the welfare of everyone, not usurped by privileged activists in need of having their moral conscience assuaged. Let the loggers work and the sawmills thrive. They benefit us all.
Thoughtful comments are welcome at henrycarlyle@outlook.com
John Blasiak is a resident of Greenfield.