[HN Gopher] Forests with multiple tree species are more effectiv...
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Forests with multiple tree species are more effective as carbon
sinks
Author : wglb
Score : 108 points
Date : 2023-11-13 18:06 UTC (4 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (phys.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (phys.org)
| promocha wrote:
| Mindless money that's being poured into carbon capture projects,
| would help grow and maintain forests for at least 10yrs. A recent
| example like Heirloom that just started its facility and would
| only capture 1000 tons per year. It took them 4yrs and $50M+ to
| build one facility. Even if they somehow were to build 1000
| facilities annually, they would only capture 10M tons of carbon.
| Also think about the carbon they would release by building those
| facilities. We need to remove 2 billion tons of carbon per year
| at current levels of pollution. Carbon capture projects are just
| another type of climate grifting like carbon offsets etc.
| NoMoreNicksLeft wrote:
| People are carbon. Could we remove them?
| verisimi wrote:
| I think that's the plan.
| 11235813213455 wrote:
| People are neutral, unless they spend money (which is more or
| less a unit of pollution & carbon-emission)
| NoMoreNicksLeft wrote:
| Every 15 people is a ton (on average). And while we can't
| remove 20 billion people, 6 billion or so would make a nice
| dent. Additionally, those people consume energy. Once their
| consumption drops to zero, we see additional savings.
|
| I think I really have stumbled upon a solution here. The
| planet will be better off for it. What's wrong with this
| idea?
| 11235813213455 wrote:
| you can reason the same with ants
|
| but ants are like a human who doesn't spend money, or
| like a bird, they are sustainable, no need to remove them
|
| but no even need to be extreme/binary, 8 billion humans
| who live like a 3rd world country-side human and spend a
| little money is totally sustainable without any issue,
| because that's equivalent to less than a hundred million
| 1st world humans
| klyrs wrote:
| Birds are known for their nitrogen sequestration.
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guano
| 11235813213455 wrote:
| Great, but that's more or less the same with other feces,
| composition vary in carbon or nitrogen, but they're all
| great fertilizers
| repelsteeltje wrote:
| Be careful there, that doesn't sound nice.
|
| An increasing number of countries have declining
| birthrate. This slowly, steadily gets us in that
| direction but not without demographic problems and
| significant economic disruptions. Let's try keep it
| peaceful...
| __MatrixMan__ wrote:
| There is no such thing as a carbon neutral human. We're
| ~20% carbon by mass.
|
| I do agree with your point about money though--economic
| activity is the primary cause of our excessive carbon
| footprint. We need to change how we practice money such
| that "number go up" type thinking correlates with progress
| toward agreeable goals instead of correlating with the
| consumption of nonrenewable resources.
| colechristensen wrote:
| For multiple reasons we need actual foresters to build
| ecosystems, not just plant a bunch of trees. They also need to
| be built to maintain themselves, not be reliant on continued
| investment. Bonus points for building ecosystems that support a
| small amount of logging.
| promocha wrote:
| Fully agree with this. Continued investment with forest
| ecosystem maintainers in place is best solution.
| 11235813213455 wrote:
| Best solution is reducing drastically our footprint, our
| consumption, instead of helping to grow forests,
| subsidizing gree businesses, why not heavily tax plane &
| car industry/usage, incentivize low-footprint lifestyles,
| educate?
| shzhdbi09gv8ioi wrote:
| You're not gonna win if you only work one way.
|
| We can both reduce our carbon footprint AND plant trees.
| colechristensen wrote:
| No, because this solution to environmental problems is
| "our impact on the environment is going to cause a global
| depression and catastrophe due to changing climate! we
| must try to stop this by causing a global depression and
| catastrophe ourselves by drastically reducing
| consumption!"
|
| Consumption that dumps carbon in the air needs to be
| replaced by consumption that doesn't. Power needs to be
| solar/wind/nuclear, cars need to be electric, things
| which are done cheaply with hydrocarbon sources need to
| be replaced with more expensive things with sustainable
| sources.
|
| Trying to make people significantly lower their standard
| of living with fear of future consequences will not work.
| It just won't. In two ways... one: a lot of what's
| happened has already happened and is inevitable, there's
| no turning back from a few degrees of warming, oceans
| rising, and climate patterns changing; two: people won't
| do it.
|
| Trying to chase the line of solving environmental
| problems with consumption reduction is pissing into the
| wind. You have to try to do things which will actually
| have effects instead of trying the impossible.
| lwn wrote:
| Maybe "the world" needs to pay to countries with large
| forests (like Brazil) to maintain them, instead of paying
| them for cutting them down (lumber, agro, resources)
| colechristensen wrote:
| The opposite, "the world" needs to put trade sanctions and
| large tariffs on countries which have exports which are
| cheaper because they abuse the environment (deforestation,
| fossil fuel powered, etc.) and while they're at it: labor
| (wage slaves, child labor, unsafe practices, actual
| slavery).
|
| Don't pay corrupt countries to be less corrupt, charge them
| a fee that makes bad practices more expensive than good
| ones.
|
| This is a game. Dictators and developing economies are good
| at taking incentive payments and pocketing them.
| hinkley wrote:
| Regulatory capture. Too much of the population of "foresters"
| is bought and paid for by the tree farming industry.
|
| Asking foxes to grow more chickens definitely gets you more
| chickens but you don't get the benefits, they do.
| verisimi wrote:
| They spent money here to put up boxes with special moss in
| around here.....
|
| And when you think that they put carbon into greenhouses to
| make the plants grow more.. I reckon extra carbon just means
| extra growth in plant life. Ie the plants are a natural
| balancing mechanism.
| virtue3 wrote:
| Interesting.
|
| I looked up the world consumption of lumber in 2018 (pre-
| pandemic stuff). ~ 2.2billion cubic meters, a cubic meter of
| wood is ROUGHLY(really depends on species) 0.55 tons.
|
| So If we doubled lumber production (which would help
| housing/construction and a lot of other sectors) wed at least
| offset the carbon created by roughly half.
|
| Still wont come close to solving our CO2 emission issues but
| interesting because we could "get something" from the lumber vs
| just storing CO2.
|
| Assuming 100% carbon capture into wood weight which is not
| realistic but I think it's a good thought exercise.
| abakker wrote:
| I'm not saying you are doing this, but don't confuse Lumber
| production and forest growth. Increasing lumber production
| decreases forest growth.
|
| we need to increase forest capacity for lumber production
| first.
| shzhdbi09gv8ioi wrote:
| I don't think you understand how trees work as carbon sinks.
| You're destroying that potential by cutting them down.
| virtue3 wrote:
| Trees actually carbon sink via growth aka creating wood.
| The CO2 they breathe in is turned mostly into growth /
| basic functioning.
|
| So no, you are NOT destroying the potential. In fact, if
| they grow and die and rot they are going to essentially
| release all the CO2 they captured.
|
| https://extension.psu.edu/how-forests-store-carbon
|
| So converting mature trees into lumber is essentially
| locking out the carbon capture more dramatically,
| especially if used in long term uses like housing etc.
| Being turned into firewood would be drastically bad for CO2
| capture.
|
| What am I missing that makes you think I don't understand?
| partitioned wrote:
| Only if the tree rots. If you turn it into treated lumber
| and build a house with it...
| cowboyscott wrote:
| I read that story as well, and while the company does promise
| increases in efficiency, the whole thing seems like a very
| expensive way to do very little.
|
| Based on light googling, a mature tree can capture about 50lbs
| of carbon a year [1]. Assuming a few hundred trees per acre [2]
| you could get, let's say, 5 tons per year in the steady/mature
| state. Small numbers, but it adds up. Leander, TX is a suburb
| of Austin that sprung up in the last 50 years. It's a useful
| measure for me as 1) I have some intuitive comprehension of the
| size (37.5 sq miles) and 2) it was an area slowly developed
| over the last 50 years. If it were reforested (you wouldn't
| want to do this because, you know, people live there), we might
| get 100kton of capture a year (guesstimating). Repeat that
| 170,000 times and we can get back to the net emissions of the
| year 2000 - a 17gigaton reduction per year.
|
| Of course, that would require planting an area double the size
| of the United States.
|
| Anyway, that's napkin math and I hope I'm off.
|
| 1: https://www.usda.gov/media/blog/2015/03/17/power-one-tree-
| ve... 2: https://bugwoodcloud.org/resource/files/27435.pdf
| 11235813213455 wrote:
| Are there other forms of long term natural carbon storage than
| hydrocarbures or shale gas? Because a wood branch eventually
| decades and reemit the carbon, if it doesn't get buried deep in
| (usually sea) ground
| angry_moose wrote:
| New forests are long-term storage.
|
| A single tree will eventually die, decay, and re-emit carbon.
| However, it will quickly be replaced by new trees that re-
| absorb a similar amount of carbon. Despite some amount of
| carbon exchange every year from growth and decay, the forest as
| a whole stores a huge amount of carbon as long as it lasts.
|
| Maybe not stable on geological time-scales due to things like
| disease, disaster, or continental drift; but certainly
| extremely valuable on the order of millenia.
| stephen_g wrote:
| Exactly - people seem to get a little caught up in the
| 'carbon offsets are BS' narrative (which there is a lot of
| truth to - a lot of credits in these markets are grifters
| selling sham credits, and offsets in general won't work long
| term if we don't massively reduce things like fossil fuel
| use). But taking it too far can mean they aren't able to
| quite grasp this about how the forest works.
|
| So you get weird, wrong takes like "because trees eventually
| die and decompose, a forest stores zero carbon on a net
| basis."
|
| But you're spot on - the new forest will absorb a certain
| amount of carbon, and then should basically reach a steady
| state where new growth trees are absorbing a similar amount
| of carbon as the decomposing trees are releasing (more or
| less on the short term, but should roughly even out over the
| medium term).
|
| Of course, there are sometimes things like bushfires, but
| ideally forest regrown in an area where there was a bushfire
| re-offsets that (but you can't claim that against other
| carbon you release, only against the carbon released by the
| bushfire!)
| hinkley wrote:
| See also forest succession, where pioneer trees grow and
| die, intermediate trees grow on the stumps, and apex canopy
| trees grow on their stumps. That's a process that's
| anywhere from 80-400 years in the making, and each species
| holds more carbon than the previous. That's a long time for
| us to get carbon neutral.
|
| One that's been replaced with clear cutting, which removed
| the nurse logs the next generation would typically
| indirectly consume.
| danbruc wrote:
| All plant biomass is equivalent to 45 years of global
| carbon dioxide emissions at current levels. You have to
| plant a lot of trees to make a noticeable dent.
| 11235813213455 wrote:
| new & long-term are 2 opposite terms
|
| by long term I mean a 10k year scale for example
| (civilization scale), not 100 years (human life scale - mid
| term), or a few years (short-term)
| angry_moose wrote:
| The North American forests existed for at least 100,000
| years, many times longer than recorded history. Is that not
| long enough for you?
|
| If we were to reforest those areas that were cut down
| ("new" forests), that's an extremely effective long term
| carbon sink.
| 11235813213455 wrote:
| Yes that forest existed for many years, produced coal,
| oil, shale gas, that's the long-term storage
|
| If the forest now regrow, it's a short term storage
| (added with the long-term effect, that will take more
| time to settle, but it's a continuous process, so it's
| good to have too)
| Panino wrote:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biochar
|
| If we get serious about producing biochar, we could sequester
| many gigatons every year of atmospheric carbon in biochar for
| addition to the soil. There, it would remain stable for
| thousands of years and improve soil microbiology, increase soil
| moisture and plant growth, which in turn would provide more
| feedstock for additional biochar in addition to other valuable
| things like food.
|
| See also:
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terra_preta
| Faaak wrote:
| On top of that, some companies are studying adding biochar to
| concrete (replacing some cement). It's really interesting
| because it lowers CO2 emissions twice (cement creation +
| biochar CO2 sequestration). It's starting to be tested a bit
| in France. Take a look in google scholar because it's really
| interesting and will be big IMHO
| jillesvangurp wrote:
| Not 100%; some of it ends up in the soil. And then more soil
| ends up on top of that, and so on. That's where oil and coal
| came from. Just accumulated deposits that didn't end up in the
| atmosphere. Over many millions of years.
| hinkley wrote:
| Half of a tree is below ground, and that breaks down slower.
|
| And in fact there are situations with root fusion where some
| roots from one tree get adopted by neighboring trees. You can
| see this occasionally with stumps that heal over without any
| trunks at all. I have seen three examples around here and
| recall the location of two (on a hiking trail less than 200 ft
| apart).
| justinator wrote:
| I grew up with the idea that the root system of a tree
| mirrors the branch system, but that's not really how it
| works. Roots don't penetrate all that far down, and are more
| spread out across the surface, but certainly don't hold half
| the mass of the tree. The bigger the tree, the more this is
| true. A giant redwood does not have that much biomass
| underground as it does above it. The soil richness is
| generally pretty poor in those giant redwood groves.
| hinkley wrote:
| Redwoods and a few of the other big trees are unusual in
| that they stop trying to pull 100% of their water from the
| ground. It's hydrologically impossible. Some of it comes
| from epiphytes like moss, higher up in the canopy. Absorbed
| straight through the bark or via adventitious root hairs.
|
| Not all of the soil carbon from tree roots is in roots.
| Without the tree, more than just the roots disappear.
| justinator wrote:
| What did the massive, global, currently undiscovered
| civilization before us do? Something tells me the giant oil and
| coal fields were their solution and we're currently digging
| that all up and utilizing.
|
| (this post is satire)
| ianburrell wrote:
| Rock. Silicates absorb CO2 through weathering. Olivine absorbs
| faster in seawater. Weathering is one of the slow non-biologic
| sinks for CO2.
|
| But it is possible to make it work faster by crushing olivine
| and dumping it in shallow ocean.
| stevenwoo wrote:
| Not exactly the answer to your question but some idea of the
| scale of the problem https://www.sciencenews.org/article/where-
| earth-stores-its-c... TLDR, it's estimated the vast majority of
| carbon on Earth above the crust is in the ocean.
| guerby wrote:
| Soil.
|
| https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-019-08636-w
|
| "Soils store climatically significant amounts of carbon (C) as
| soil organic matter, globally about 2.3 times greater than the
| C in atmospheric CO2 and 3.5 times greater than the C in all
| living terrestrial plants1. However, prolonged cultivation
| accelerates the decomposition of soil organic matter and can
| cause the loss of 20-67% of the soil C in an agricultural
| field2,3,4. Between 1850 and 1998, global agricultural
| cultivation led to the release of ~78 Gt of C from soil as CO2
| to the atmosphere4, with ~133 Gt of soil C so released since
| the beginning of agriculture5. Since the current global annual
| CO2 emissions from fossil fuels and all other sources are ~10
| Gt of C6, soil C sequestration has thus been proposed as a
| plausible partial climate mitigation strategy that might buy
| time while low-carbon technologies are being developed and
| adopted7. Indeed, a recent international initiative has set a
| target of increasing global soil organic matter by 0.4% per
| year to help negate some greenhouse gas emissions"
|
| Note: papers about soil use Carbon mass, not CO2 mass, to
| convert 1kg C ~ 3.67 kg of CO2
| progne wrote:
| I've had a die off of the pinyon pine trees on my small lot, from
| bark beetles, and have lost about half of them. It's been a big
| job to clear them out. During that I've noticed that they are
| more likely to survive when closely paired with the other common
| tree in the area, a shaggy bark juniper. The junipers are
| resistant to the beetles and seem to bestow some of that on
| nearby pines.
|
| It was 50/50 pine/juniper, now it's around 25/75, all due to
| loses in pine. Without the juniper the loss could have been
| another half as much pine. So my yard is an example of multiple
| species resulting in more carbon capture.
| freedomben wrote:
| Junipers are fascinating trees to me. Most people find them
| ugly, (and they certainly can feel that way next to a beautiful
| Maple) but they are quite remarkable trees. I've seen junipers
| get horribly torn up by deer antlers, and survive wounds that
| would have ended a Cottonwood and especially an Ash or a Maple.
| They are survivors!
| winnit wrote:
| Even if they are ugly when they are living, they're wonderful
| to behold when they burn! I would hazard a guess that they're
| unpopularity with people stems from their popularity with
| ticks.
| hinkley wrote:
| Simard showed that birch trees favor a more benign fungus in
| the soil over a pathogenic cousin. When you cut the birches,
| within a few years the balance shifts and other trees start to
| succumb.
|
| I wonder if the pinyon is working like that or if it's
| polyphenols of some sort being exchanged through the food web.
| tomp wrote:
| Can we end this charade, please?
|
| Unless your forest is actually producing coal, it's not a "carbon
| sink".
| shzhdbi09gv8ioi wrote:
| > A carbon sink is anything, natural or otherwise, that
| accumulates and stores some carbon-containing chemical compound
| for an indefinite period and thereby removes carbon dioxide
| (CO2) from the atmosphere.
| tomp wrote:
| Indeed, that's why I said "coal".
|
| If a tree doesn't become coal, it's not storing C for an
| _indefinite_ amount of time, but for definite, relatively
| short amount of time. A tree either rots, burns, or is used
| for housing, in which case, again, it either rots or burns.
| Unless it becomes coal.
| 11235813213455 wrote:
| so with coal & hydrocarbures, trees are actual storage
| mecanism
| yjftsjthsd-h wrote:
| > If a tree doesn't become coal, it's not storing C for an
| _indefinite_ amount of time, but for definite, relatively
| short amount of time. A tree either rots, burns, or is used
| for housing, in which case, again, it either rots or burns.
| Unless it becomes coal.
|
| I don't think that's actually true; if a tree rots (either
| in place or after being part of a house), some of the
| carbon is released to the atmosphere, but the rest goes
| into the soil.
|
| In any event, taking carbon out of the atmosphere seems
| beneficial even if it is only for a few decades.
| partitioned wrote:
| When you say something this dumb does it make you doubt
| everything else you believe or do you double down on your
| cognitive impairment
| 11235813213455 wrote:
| a forest is a carbon sink in long term, part of hydrocarbures
| creation, which takes hundred thousands years to million years,
| but that's a continuous process. It would work well if people
| could consume less oil products
| stonemetal12 wrote:
| Sounds like a spurious correlation to me. They found 4 species
| forest 70% better than mono species forest but by 6 species,
| forests are back to mono forest levels.
| rapind wrote:
| Basically monoculture is horrible for everything but industry.
| yjftsjthsd-h wrote:
| Unless we mean in different places, I'm pretty sure it's bad
| for industry too;, ex. a part only having a single supplier is
| a risk to every downstream consumer of that part.
| zwieback wrote:
| Including the authors of the study, we all want this to be true
| but from what I can tell by reading the discussion in the
| article the "aboveground carbon store" of monocultures might
| actually be hard to beat. Their data appears to be shaky and we
| should take other factors into account to encourage diversity.
| hinkley wrote:
| Monocultures are the spherical cows of horticulture.
|
| It's also a misnomer because all of those pest species count as
| the biosphere. The harder you try to grow only one plant, the
| more non-plants you end up growing.
| newsclues wrote:
| What if Humans focused most climate change efforts into
| reforesting the Sahara desert?
|
| Build up a system of desalination, irrigation and slowly turn the
| desert into grassland as a giant carbon sink. Lots of hard work,
| and it will take a long time, but why try to reinvent the planets
| natural systems when it comes to climate change?
| 11235813213455 wrote:
| The situation in Sahara worsened even more with climate
| changes, so I think it's best to act globally, as everything is
| connected, not on a specific & hostile place which will require
| a lot of efforts (so pollution since I doubt it'll be done
| without any machine, plastics, oil). Best to work on individual
| level, spending much less, voting well, let tree grow where
| they can grow more easily instead of putting tennis courts,
| swimming pools, oversized houses, etc..
| jtr1 wrote:
| High altitude dust from the Sahara acts as fertilizer to the
| Amazon.[1] The biosphere is a complex, interconnected system.
|
| 1. https://www.nasa.gov/centers-and-facilities/goddard/nasa-
| sat...
| pvaldes wrote:
| Biodiversity generates stability
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