The Carbon the World Forgot — the boreal forest-
“The boreal forest stores more carbon than any land-based ecosystem on the planet, according to a new report that says the Amazon is no match for Canada’s boggy bush.”
It turns out that a major reason is all peat under the trees. Too many carbon sequestration analyses only look at the vegetation above the ground, maybe not even the roots, and certainly not the soil. Very serious errors of policy will be made unless the entire structure of the land from bedrock to the tallest vegetation is not taken into account.
Story: Canada’s boreal forest top-rated carbon warehouse. By Margaret Munro, Canwest News Service.
Ralph Maughan
Dr. Ralph Maughan is professor emeritus of political science at Idaho State University with specialties in natural resource politics, public opinion, interest groups, political parties, voting and elections. Aside from academic publications, he is author or co-author of three hiking/backpacking guides, and he is past President of the Western Watersheds Project and the creator of The Wildlife News.
Key sentence here,”Canada and other countries decided against inclusion of the forest carbon in the Kyoto Protocol because they didn’t want to be held accountable for emissions from wild fires and pests, such as the mountain pine beetle, that can destroy large tracts of forest and send huge amounts of carbon into the atmosphere.”
Government’s want “world to forget” because if they have to account for the carbon stores then they have to account for the emissions. Sounds like beetle kill is an especially large source. “In the worst year, the impacts resulting from the beetle outbreak in British Columbia were equivalent to 75% of the average annual direct forest fire emissions from all of Canada during 1959–1999.”-Nature Mag.