Reducing the amount of carbon in the atmosphere from the burning of fossil fuels is of national and international importance at this point in history. Scientists worldwide have raised alarms about how the burning of fossil fuels is releasing too much carbon, upsetting the natural balance of chemicals in the atmosphere. Forests are key to capturing that carbon.
Older forests store a lot of carbon, and younger forests sequester a lot of carbon, both of which help control the amount of carbon in the atmosphere.
According to a 2009 article entitled Trapping Greenhouse Gases: A Role for Minnesota Agriculture in Climate Change Policy by Cheryl Miller in the Rural Minnesota Journal (published by the Center for Rural Policy and Development), “Carbon is one of the primary constituents of living things, comprising roughly 40% of the dry weight of biomass. In addition, the carbon cycle plays a key role in moderating the earth’s climate system, using CO2 [carbon dioxide] in the atmosphere to trap solar radiation needed to warm the earth.
“…Fossil fuel (coal, oil, and natural gas) combustion releases carbon that has been locked in the earth for millions of years and has raised atmospheric CO2 concentrations 35% higher than at the beginning of the industrial era.
“Carbon flows between land and atmosphere occur through photosynthesis, when green plants absorb sunlight and take up carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, and through plant respiration and decomposition, when carbon dioxide is returned to the atmosphere. …Carbon can be stored for hundreds of years in trees or thousands of years in soils.”
According to the U.S. Forest Service, “Younger forests sequester carbon more rapidly, and older forests contain greater amounts of carbon. …At the same time that trees store carbon as they grow, sustainably produced timber can also be a very environmentally friendly building material, and wood-based bioenergy and biofuels can be used as an alternative to fossil fuels.
“Whereas the production of steel and concrete generates significant greenhouse gas emissions, forest products continue to store carbon even after harvest. Therefore, it is of utmost importance to keep forest as forests (and prevent conversion to nonforest use). A next step would be to determine whether a particular forest is best suited to long-term protection, sustainable harvest for wood products, bioenergy production, or some other alternative or combination.” And therein lies the crux of the debate.
A Sierra Club document on carbon capture and sequestration states, “As a nation, we should focus our resources on seizing the cheapest, cleanest, quickest, most reliable methods to displace carbon emissions while meeting our energy needs.”
Some formulas for determining the amount of carbon used to harvest wood include the carbon released through the process of transporting the wood, but according to Superior National Forest/Gunflint District Ranger Dennis Neitzke, this is not always factored into the ecologic cost of other renewable energy sources.
Natural Resource Defense Council
The Natural Resource Defense Council is cautious about the use of biofuels, claiming on its website that without proper legislative safeguards, biomass harvesting could result in “costly and harmful unintended consequences to wildlife and the environment.”
The organization supports removing woody biomass from the immediate vicinity of homes and communities to reduce wildfire risk, but it wants to keep federal forests from being “mined” for biomass and converted to “biofuels farms.”
“Proposals to use ‘thinnings’ from national forests do not make economic or ecologic sense,” its website states. “At best, only a small amount of biomass from fuel treatments would be available from national forests…. This drop in the bucket, if feasible at all, could come at the expense of degraded forests and would establish an unsustainable industrial demand for continued commercial exploitation of public resources.”
Biomass initiatives that are solely locally based, however, are turning out to be sustainable, such as the use of biomass waste to heat buildings in downtown St. Paul.
“Sustainable forestry practices that identify and protect high conservation values such as old-growth or late successional forest and specific wildlife habitat, and avoid conversion, are well established,” the Natural Resource Defense Council states. “These practices allow natural forests to remain working forests, without sacrificing critical wildlife habitat and other important environmental values.
“Loss of forests is one of the greatest threats to biodiversity worldwide and a major contributor to global warming. While deforestation is the most dramatic example of this growing crisis, equally critical is the conversion of natural forests to single-species plantations. Plantations may look like ‘forests,’ but they are biological deserts when compared to the natural forests that they replace….”
Biomass in Minnesota
When wood replaces fossil fuels, a net reduction in greenhouse gas emissions takes place, according to Dovetail Partners, a nonprofit forest research organization. Researcher Cheryl Miller of Dovetail states, “A major portion of Minnesota’s existing carbon sink is forests and peatlands in the public domain. Federal and state government and dozens of county and municipal-level agencies manage these and other open spaces for different purposes, among them wilderness protection, habitat, recreation, timber, grazing, and mining. Focusing a major effort on public lands would reap the advantages of both permanent protection and skilled management.”
According to the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources Division of Forestry Utilization and Marketing Program, “Sustainable timber harvest and efficient and wise utilization of our wood resources are crucial elements in maintaining a healthy economy and ecology because most forest management is done through commercial timber harvesting activity, and because wood-using industries are an important element of Minnesota’s economy.”
This is the seventh in a series of articles on issues related to utilizing biomass from the Superior National Forest as a source of local renewable energy and its potential to benefit the economy of Cook County.
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