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taildragerdriver:
Sorry to be so slow to reply. If you send an email to: rammy54385 [at] mypacks.net I'll reply from my real email address and we can continue the conversation. Thanks.

Rick

posted 4 years, 10 months ago
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Traildragerdriver: I had problems getting logged in, and this post may be lagging behind by this point. By way of introduction, for more than 10 years I have been a strong supporter of the use of thinning and prescribed fire to reduce fire risk and competition and to improve habitat in dry forests on the eastside. I also support using thinned material to produce wood products and for biomass, and am interested in learning more about producing charcoal and biofuels.
However, I?m afraid the published science on carbon storage by forests is contrary to much of what you offer in your post. Logging or thinning a forest, and processing trees into wood releases significant amounts of carbon. In the dry eastside forests, it appears that, even calculating in reduced emissions from wildfire in a treated forests, the net effect will be a release of forest carbon to the atmosphere. I don?t think this argues against doing restoration/fuels-reduction treatments, but we?re probably not going to be able to sell carbon credits to fund the work.
In moist forests typical of the Westside, the evidence is even more clear. You can?t just look at rates of sequestration, you also have to consider all the pools of carbon in the forest ? live trees, other live vegetation, coarse woody debris, forest floor and mineral soil. Logging a forest, especially an older one, releases large amounts of carbon to the atmosphere, a process that continues for decades due to the decay of roots, stumps, etc. A plantation doesn?t become a net sink of carbon until after a decade or so, and an intensively managed plantation forest, including wood products, won?t match the carbon stored in a forest that?s simply allowed to grow. Westside forests are significant carbon sinks for many hundreds of years.

posted 4 years, 10 months ago
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