[Terrapreta] if yer nor forest....

[David Yarrow]

having spent many profound and peaceful hours in the shade and shelter of many ancient forests doing surveys to locate and document the 1/2 of 1% of the eastern US forests that remain as old growth, i find this anaylsis of old growth forests as inferior carbon sinks to be tragic, absurd and incredibly near sighted -- a foolish rationale for the continued rape and ravage of the most supreme manifestations of the living biosphere.  the idea that we can store more carbon in young, fast growing trees instead of ancient forests is dangerously dumb.

first of all, in this discussion of ancient vs. young forest as carbon sink, the keyword here is deforestation.  young forests of supposedly rapidly growing trees only exist because the original forest has been logged, burned and destroyed.  those catastrophic processes quickly release nearly all of the carbon and nutrients that were accumulated over decades and centuries, and stored in the original trees, understory, highly organic soil, and other living organisms.  in those processes, most of the carbon is oxidized, while most of the nutrients leach away into subsoil and watersheds.  and most of the wildlife is displaced and must find new habitats for food and shelter.  those displaced chemistries create widespread disturbances and disruptions in far distance places.  deforestation is a catastrophic release of chemistry and chaos, and traumatic degradation of complex biotic communities.

it will take many, many years of young forest growth, however rapid it MIGHT seem to be, to compensate for the catastrophic disruptive releases of deforestation.  and if in our analysis, we include not just crude measures of weight and volume in tree and soil biomass, but complexity, density, diversity, and stability, this entire young-over-ancient argument becomes a no-contest triumph for these climax ecosystems.

at any rate, ancient forests are profoundly more than magnificent carbon and nutrient sinks.  they are a complex communities of interacting organisms that perform multiple funcations to regulate, stabilize and sustain the web of living processed that make most earth's resplendent bounty and beauty possible.  the current discussion is like discounting our lungs and kidneys as merely being so many pounds of protein, fat, minerals, and water that could be ground up and turned into one or two nutritous dinners.  forests are powerfully effective to regulate the atmosphere, including the release of not just oxygen and many other more subtle gaseous molecules that are the scent of sublime, not to mention the ions that form the electromagnetic unity of the troposphere.  forests and their leaves also filter the air, removing impurities and wastes, restoring ionic balances, releasing moisture as humidity,, reducing winds and creating a zone of substory serenity.  a forest exerts multiple profound physical,  chemical and electromagnetic effects to reduce the extreme winds and violent rains of storms into beneficial

ancient forests and their deep, nutrient rich, living soils are the guardians of watersheds.  they filter and purify the rains and snows, removing toxics and excesses.  they hold excess rain and snowfall  in their spongy biomass complexity, slowing their release to reduce floods with their muddy catastrophic erosions that degrade aquatic habitat and render estuaries and seacoasts into useless, barely habitable mudflats.  they shade and cool the land and water, to further regulate the temperature of the soil, water and atmosphere, and improve its stability and viability as habitat for the complex communities of living organisms.

but if we just stick to simple minded measures of weight and volume of carbon and nutrients, very soon we must realize that given the constant influx of solar energy per square meter, ancient forests are far more sophisticated at making use of that harvest of extra-terrestrial photons.  just in terms of trees, which the superstructures to generate complex forest habitat zones, the multi-level canopy, understory and ground-story structures of an ancient forest are capturing and converting the solar influx into carbohydrate biomass with as much or more efficiency that a chaotic outburst of upstart young trees.  any tree will organize its canopy to intercept and absorb a maximum of solar influx.  a tree growing in an open field will direct that growth into more horizontal than vertical growth, creating a landscape of short, fat trees and a low canopy and a tangled understory.  a tree growing in a forest will direct that same amount of energy into growing narrow and tall, stretching to reach the high canopy, meanwhile creating a broader, open zone at the land surface under that high canopy wirhin which many other complex biotic organisms and processes to become established.

however, having spent 25 years working with agriculture, i've spent a lot of time contemplating the invisible processes below the land surface within the soil.  i've developed a rare and profound respect that there is as much if not more growth and biomass happening under the soil as above.  and the most critical factors in this soil biotic ecology isn't the plant roots or the inert organic matter, its the living biomass of unseen microscopic creatures.  and this is exactly the most profound gift of terra preta -- the soil biology it engenders and sustains -- the so-called 
"microbial reef" effects.

enough of this.  all these words barely scratch the surface to decribe and enumerate the awesome, ivaluable, irreplacable living complexities of ancient forest communities in comparison to young forests or grasslands.  the notion we can cut these tightly woven, ecological tapestries and replace them with fast growing high efficiency tree plantations is ridiculous if it were not so dangerous for the long-term integrity and unity of the planetary biosphere.

back to other more useful tasks.

David Yarrow
"If yer not forest, yer against us."
Turtle EyeLand Sanctuary
44 Gilligan Road, East Greenbush, NY 12061
dyarrow at nycap.rr.com
www.championtrees.org
www.OnondagaLakePeaceFestival.org
www.citizenre.com/dyarrow/
www.farmandfood.org
www.SeaAgri.com
 
"Happiness can be found even in the darkest of times, 
if one only remembers to turn on the light."  
-Albus Dumbledore
  ----- Original Message ----- 
  From: Brian Hans 
  To: Terrapreta at bioenergylists.org 
  Sent: Friday, September 21, 2007 8:40 AM
  Subject: Re: [Terrapreta] CO2 rising


  Lou,


  All that decaying matter in an old-growth forest is turning into something. If not soil, then what? 

  Virtually 100% CO2 and other off gases of carbon. If the carbon was turning into 'soil' then wouldnt forest floors be 10ft thick black soils? Ofc they are not, why would that be?  

  I learned during my days in the Doug Fir forests of Oregon that a cubic meter of that "soil" can 
  contain more than 35,000 separate species and 2 billion individual organisms. Your statement 
  baffles me. Please elaborate. 


  Just as a forest isnt a carbon sink...neither is its floor. http://www.geology.iastate.edu/gccourse/chem/carbon/images/carboncontent2.gif
  This chart is shows the loss of carbon to the system (a neg number = positive carbon fixing). Notice how the tropical forests stack up vs other ecosystems? Put plainly...the farther away you move from the equator, the less soil digestion of C and the more soil production. Why is this? Ofc is has to do with temp...boreal forest soil organisms done have 365 day 80F temps to go to work...they have to take the winter off (hard to decompose whilst frozen). 

  Another point here, grasslands do a better job of sinking carbon into the soil than does a forest y/y. Again clearly on the graph, one can see how forests generally dont make soil whilst grasslands and ag. does. Anyone who has tried to farm a newly cut forest can attest to the fact that the soils are very poor and thin VS a grassland. It can be said that prairies (grasslands in general but prairies in specific) are like an iceburg...most of the mass in under the soil line. My suspicion is that it has to do with soil biomass amount vs trees soil biomass + productivity of grasses y/y vs trees. 

  Anyone knows that tropical forest soils are very poor. But that ideal can be extrapolated to most forests...why? Because forests tend to hold their biomass within the above ground parts and prairies/grasslands/ag. tend to hold biomass closer to or below the ground level. 


  Not sure if that answers your baffling but its the best I can do this morning.  

  Brian




    On 9/21/07, Brian Hans <bhans at earthmimic.com> wrote:


      This is not a full 'study'. No methodology, conclusion, data... but the results are obvious in my opinion...forests and especially old growth forests are not carbon sinks. 

      Prairie is a carbon sink because its producing soil, forests arnt producing soils. This important distinction gets blurred with the advent of TP...whereas forest can INFACT become soil forming carbon sinks. But...so can prairies, deserts, boreal, your herb garden in the back...etc thru the advent of TP. 



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