Climate Feedback

Anjali Nayar, an International Development Research Centre fellow at Nature, recently visited a pioneering project in Madagascar that's aiming to protect one of the country's few remaining forests. About 90% of the species in Madagascar's rainforests are found nowhere else on Earth, but efforts to save the island nation's forests are about more than conserving biodiversity.

It's hoped that projects like this will provide a model for efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from deforestation. Under a proposal, known as reducing emissions from deforestation and forest degradation (REDD), wealthy nations could meet their emissions targets in part by buying carbon credits from developing countries such as Madagascar. REDD is one of the topics up for discussion at the UN climate-change conference in Copenhagen this December. Countries will negotiate whether REDD should be included in the global climate deal that takes over from the Kyoto Protocol.

But as Anjali reports, to be successful these projects must overcome the poverty and political upheaval common to most developing countries. Read Anjali's full report here. Or see a slideshow video version, here.

Posted by Olive Heffernan on November 05, 2009
Categories: Anjali Nayar, Biodiversity and Ecology, Carbon markets, Climate Policy, Deforestation, Features, GHG emissions, Notes from the Field | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

From undersea meetings by Maldives’ ministers to debates in the US Senate, talk of climate change is echoing around every corner of the globe. The message: needs are great and growing fast, while resources remain few and far between.

The task awaiting negotiators headed for Copenhagen this December - to agree a global treaty for saving the planet - is daunting, particularly with hopes of achieving the task in Copenhagen fading rapidly.

But one person eagerly anticipating the conference is Greg Asner, a tropical ecologist with the Carnegie Institution for Science’s global ecology department in Stanford, California. For the past decade Greg and his team have been stationed in the Peruvian Amazon, designing and testing a system that can accurately calculate the amount of carbon locked up in forests and track changes over time. Jeff Tollefson journeyed to the Amazon and reports on Asner’s work in the latest issue of Nature.

Continue reading "No forest too wide or mountain too high in the fight against global warming" »

Posted by Anna Barnett on October 22, 2009
Categories: Deforestation, Stephanie Baudains | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

In this year’s series of UN climate talks - the latest of which took place last week in Bonn - one of the issues negotiators are sinking their teeth into is a source of greenhouse gases that has previously been sidestepped. Chopping and burning trees causes an estimated one-fifth of global emissions, and slowing down deforestation could be the cheapest and quickest way to keep a substantial load of gas out of the atmosphere. With this in mind, the Bali meeting in 2007 called for a decision on forests to be made by the time the 2009 talks wrap up in Copenhagen this December.

But deciding to do something about it and agreeing on what needs to be done are two very different matters, as Mark Schrope writes in a feature on Nature Reports Climate Change this week. He explains:

Some of issues raised are rooted in serious ethical and environmental concerns, such as how to protect indigenous people and ensure compliance. But much of what was being mulled over boils down to money: adequately addressing deforestation will require a new flow of billions of dollars from developed to developing nations. Developing countries are scrambling to position themselves to receive as much as possible, while developed nations are doing their best to ensure they get what they want from their investments. The result is a complex debate that is likely to grow more heated as countries move from stating their positions to settling on an agreement that everyone can live with beyond December.

Continue reading "When money grows on trees" »

Posted by Anna Barnett on August 17, 2009
Categories: Anna Barnett, Biodiversity and Ecology, Deforestation, In the News | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

The Earth’s large forests take up substantially more atmospheric carbon dioxide through photosynthesis than they release back to the atmosphere through respiration. Thus acting as a carbon ‘sink’, they (and the oceans) are our closest natural allies in the fight against climate change.

But many forests are at threat - not only from logging and clearing, but from climate change itself.

Take drought. How will mature tropical rain forests respond to dryer conditions, which some climate models suggest might be ahead in the not-so-distant future?

The 2005 drought in the Amazon basin gave scientists an opportunity to find out. What they saw is not particularly heartening: Prolonged dryness has apparently turned some affected areas of the Amazon from a carbon sink to a carbon source, a team led by Oliver Phillips of Leeds University in Britain reports in Science today (Abstract here).

Patches subjected to a 100-milimetre decrease in rainfall released on average 5.3 tonnes of carbon per hectare – around 9 times the amount undisturbed tropical forests take up, on average, per year. Basin-wide, between 1.2-1.6 billion tonnes of carbon were released during the 2005 drought, the team estimates.

Over at Nature News, I’ve put together a little briefing on what we know and what we don’t know about the tropical carbon sink.

Quirin Schiermeier

Image: Punchstock

Posted by Quirin Schiermeier on March 06, 2009
Categories: Biodiversity and Ecology, Biosphere feedbacks, Climate Science, Deforestation, Mitigation, Quirin Schiermeier, Topics | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

Tropical forests which (still) cover around 10% of the global land area contain more carbon per hectare than any other form of vegetation. It’s obvious from that that their growth or decline has a huge impact on the global carbon budget.

Cutting down forests will add carbon to the atmosphere, no matter which kind of land cover replaces the jungle. But what’s happening in tropical forests that have long been undisturbed by logging, storms or fire? Theoretically, the carbon balance of such old-growth forest – if tree growth and death are in equilibrium, that is - should be next to zero.

But apparently it’s not. In a paper in Nature today (subscription), a team led by Simon Lewis of Leeds University in Britain reports that tree biomass in intact African forests increased between 1968 and 2007. Across 79 plots monitored in ten countries large living trees added an average 0.63 tonnes of carbon per hectare each year. Scaled up to the continent, and including roots, smaller trees and dead wood, African forests seem to have stored 340 million tonnes of carbon per year during recent decades. Previous studies suggested that Amazonian forests are accumulating biomass and carbon at a similar rate. Globally, intact tropical forests seem to take up 1.3 billion tonnes of carbon per year – equivalent to almost 20% of annual carbon dioxide emissions worldwide.

Continue reading "Jungle Fit!" »

Posted by Quirin Schiermeier on February 18, 2009
Categories: Categories, Biosphere feedbacks, Deforestation, GHG emissions, Mitigation, Quirin Schiermeier, Topics | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

Cross-posted from In the Field

A leader of the the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change told the AAAS annual meeting in Chicago on Saturday that the world's climate is likely to change much faster than predicted, leaving the world with two choices: start cutting carbon emissions earlier, or make the cuts deeper.

The comments came the morning after former U.S. Vice President Al Gore called on scientists at the meeting to help convey a sense of urgency about climate change to policy makers and the public.

"We are basically looking now at a future climate that is beyond anything we've considered seriously in climate model simulations," said Chris Field, co-chair of the IPCC's second working group and a professor at Stanford University and the Carnegie Institution for Science.

This is because the rate at which carbon is entering the atmosphere is increasing much faster than the IPPC modeled in its last report, issued in 2007. That report estimated that world temperatures could increase by between 1.1 to 6.4 degrees Celsius by 2100. But the surge in the use of coal to generate power in developing countries, combined with climate impacts on natural carbon sinks, such as oceans, forests and tundra, mean that future climate impacts will likely be more severe than the IPPC realized, Field said.

"We have higher emissions, and we have a less friendly natural system to picking up these higher emissions, and they both mean that looking forward, the challenge of stabilizing atmospheric carbon dioxide is getting more complicated than we thought it was before," Field said.

Continue reading "AAAS: Climate issue getting "more complicated"" »

Posted by Anna Barnett on February 16, 2009
Categories: Climate Science, Climate prediction, Deforestation, Energy, Erika Check Hayden, GHG emissions | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

Hard to believe: The long-standing notion that old forests are carbon neutral – that is, that from a certain age forests cease to absorb and accumulate carbon – has its origin from a mere decade worth of data from one single site.

Although timidly questioned every so often, this apparently wrong postulate has prevailed for more than 30 years, leaving its mark in the Kyoto Protocol which excludes old-growth forests from national carbon budgets.

The finding, reported in this week’s Nature, that old forests do accumulate carbon, and apparently in vast amounts, is therefore anything but marginal. Tropical forests were excluded from the study, because there are too few monitoring sites. But primary forests in the boreal and temporary regions of the Northern Hemisphere alone capture some 1.3 gigatonnes of carbon a year, the meta-analysis of data from 519 plots of forests between 15 and 800 years of age has revealed. An editor's summary of the paper is here.

“Hence, 15 % of the global forest surface, which is currently not being considered for offsetting increasing atmospheric CO2 concentrations, is responsible for at least 10% of the global net ecosystem production,” the authors write.

Obviously, the carbon sequestered in old forest was previously accounted for elsewhere. Disturbingly, given that some offset profiteers praise tree planting as a panacea of sorts for climate change, young forests may actually be sources, rather than sinks, of CO2, if decomposition of soils and older vegetation preceded their creation.

Leaving intact and protecting old forests seems a far better option. This insight comes rather late, but better late than never. Oh, and it will really give climate negotiators something to think about.

My colleague Emma Marris has more in her news story here.

Quirin Schiermeier

Posted by Quirin Schiermeier on September 11, 2008
Categories: Biosphere feedbacks, Deforestation, Mitigation, Personal action, Quirin Schiermeier | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

For all tree huggers out there, this week’s Science is dedicated to ‘forests in flux’, paying tribute to the trees and their contribution to the greater good. A special collection of articles in print, with complementary and online material, examines the fate of the world’s forests, in the face of climate change and an escalating human population.

If it’s been a while since you’ve had the chance to appreciate the languid leafiness of forest foliage, check out the online video. Or for those of you hoping for a more ‘hands on’ experience, there’s a whole section of Science Careers dedicated to opportunities in forest ecology.

There’s lots of serious science, with six Perspectives and one Review by researchers from all over the globe who give their tuppence worth on what’s needed to better understand forests and manage them properly.

Of particular relevance to discussions on how forests can mitigate global warming, Lera Miles and Valerie Kapos have a Perspective highlighting the risks involved in proposed schemes such as REDD (reduced emissions from deforestation and forest degradation) and how to minimize them. Also on this topic, Josep Canadell and Michael Raupach write on what science currently tells us is the best way to manage forests for sequestering carbon.

Drew Purves and Stephen Pacala discuss how forest dynamics remain one of the largest uncertainties in predicting future climate change and detail some of the efforts underway to improve their representation in models. Or for a really solid review of how forests affect climate change, check out Gordan Bonan’s piece here.

Or if that seems like a lot of tree pulp to get through, here are some interesting stats from the issue:

Forests cover ~42 million km2 in tropical, temperate, and boreal lands, and cover ~30% of the land surface

They store ~45% of terrestrial carbon and account for ~50% of terrestrial net primary production.

Forests hold more than double the amount of carbon in the atmosphere.

Carbon uptake by forests in the 1990s contributed to ~33% of anthropogenic carbon emission from fossil fuel and landuse change.

Olive Heffernan

Image: Plantations of Pinus radiata and Eucalyptus nitens in Gippsland (Victoria, Australia); courtesy of Michael Ryan.

Posted by Olive Heffernan on June 13, 2008
Categories: Biodiversity and Ecology, Biosphere feedbacks, Carbon markets, Climate Policy, Climate Science, Climate prediction, Deforestation, GHG emissions, Mitigation, Olive Heffernan, Uncertainty | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

One of the most significant aspects of the UN climate meeting in Bali was an agreement to bring emissions from deforestation into the loop. It only makes sense, given that deforestation is estimated to cause as much as 20 percent of the global greenhouse emissions. There’s still debate about the exact figure, of course, but the point is that it’s an awfully large number to ignore.

We first covered the issue last fall, when environmental advocates and rainforest nations (as they are calling themselves these days) started gearing up for the meeting. With an eye toward Bonn, where the next deforestation discussions will take place in June, I decided to revisit the issue and figure out where we’re at. This week’s Nature features the first story in a two-part special report that runs this and next week.

As a reporter you often have a pretty good feeling for where a story might lead you - the trick is being prepared to be wrong. This was one of those cases where I was caught a little bit by surprise. I expected I would be writing about early-stage discussions on how to build a market that rewards countries for reducing emissions, but I ended up writing about whether this is, or should be, the route the world intends to take.

I thought this debate was pretty much resolved before Bali, or at least in Bali, but people started hammering on the issue the minute I picked up the phone. As it turns out, the European Commission had even issued a policy proposal last month that would close the door to deforestation credits in the European trading scheme, instead putting money in a pot for traditional government programmes.

One thing led to another and pretty soon I wound up back in Kyoto, where the debate between US negotiators, who were pushing the market-based approach, and their European counterparts began more than a decade earlier. The idea still has a strong foothold in the United States, and is being pushed by a diverse and powerful set of interests ranging from utilities to environmental groups. But the divide is still fairly wide and deep on this issue, so we’ll have to see where it goes from here.

I don’t want to give too much away regarding the piece that comes out next week, but I’ll give you a couple of hints: It centers on the world’s largest tropical forest, and I had the opportunity to practice my Portuguese while reporting it out.

Jeff Tollefson

Posted by Olive Heffernan on March 07, 2008
Categories: Deforestation, Features | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)