A new study from the Wilderness Society shows that Pacific Northwest forests are the national leader — by a huge margin — in carbon storage. To get a sense of just how much, “carbon stored in the trees and soils of the moist national forests in Washington, Oregon and southeast Alaska totals some 9.8 billion metric tons. By comparison, one year of fossil fuel burned in the United States contains 5.8 billion metric tons of carbon dioxide,” according to this story from the Tacoma News Tribune.
The Olympic National Forest tied with Umpqua National Forest in Oregon as the second-best carbon bank of all the 120 national forests in the country, according to the report. Willamette National Forest in Oregon was No. 1, and Gifford Pinchot Forest in southwest Washington ranked fourth.
“The mature and old-growth forests in the Pacific Northwest and southeast Alaska are among the Earth’s greatest carbon-storing ecosystems,” said Jerry Franklin, professor of ecosystem analysis at the University of Washington’s College of Forest Resources.
These forests act as giant piggy banks, storing up carbon, said Mike Anderson, a Wilderness Society senior resource analyst and a co-author of the report.
The region’s mature trees, moisture, productive soils, long growing season and relative lack of forest fire all contribute to the high carbon density in the national forests, Anderson said.
It’s clear that the Northwest’s forests are a valuable weapon in the fight against climate change, and that protecting these forests from development, through conservation and responsible harvesting, is critical. We’re not just helping ourselves, we have a resource that can help the world.
While big trees store carbon, inferences that we lose carbon when we harvest is dead wrong and a perfect demonstration of why carbon policy is in trouble. The way we use wood has the highest leverage to reduce carbon emissions. Deforestation loses the carbon stored, but sustainably managing the forest and burning the wood to substitute for fossil fuels produces a sustainable stream of carbon neutral solar energy displacing fossil emissions year after year. Old forests do not reduce carbon emissions after about 100 years, giving off as much carbon through crowding out and decay as any new growth. All the wood you see in buildings is an extended forest, the opposite effect of deforestation; carbon storage that would not exist if we just left the wood in old forests. Better yet, that wood displaced massive amounts of steel and concrete and their emissions, a far better use than just energy. You have to look at the full life cycle of carbon http://www.corrim.org for a science-based approach.