A view of the Calapooya Mountains in the Umpqua National Forest. Photo from U.S. Forest Service.
We all know there’s something special about Oregon’s forests.
A new study by the Wilderness Society says if you’re looking for a place to store carbon, Oregon forests are the best in the nation.
Using Forest Service data, the Society says the top ten best forests for storing carbon are all in the Pacific Northwest. Six of them in Oregon, three of them are in Washington and one is in Alaska.
What makes our forests so good?
Mike Anderson with the Wilderness Society’s office in Seattle says it’s a combination of factors. A moist climate, the kinds of trees we have here, a longer growing season, old growth trees and fewer fires allow our forests to build up massive amounts of carbon.
Map of the top ten carbon storing National Forests from the Wilderness Society. Click on image for larger version.
On average, these forests store about 135 metric tons of carbon per acre, which is equivalent to about 500 metric tons of carbon dioxide, a major greenhouse gas.
The top carbon storing powerhouse of all is the Willamette National Forest in the Central Oregon Cascades. It holds about 164 metric tons of carbon per acre, about the same as 600 metric tons of carbon dioxide.
Here’s another way of looking at it. Compared to how much carbon we burn by using fossil fuels, there’s about a 20-month supply in these trees.
Anderson says this has implications for how we manage these forests.
“The best thing we can do,” he says, “is to leave them alone. These trees can retain the carbon for centuries. We know these westside moist forests are holding a lot of carbon and it’s best to let them do that.”
The study’s co-author, Ann Ingerson says, “Loss of a portion of this stored carbon can add to our greenhouse gas emissions burden just as we are struggling to achieve the drastic reductions needed.”
Getting the feds as well as state and local governments to think of these areas as “carbon banks” will take some effort.
The Bush Administration wanted to dramatically increase logging on Western Oregon forests under the control of the Bureau of Land Management. There’s a lot of carbon in those trees, too. The Wilderness Society says BLM’s forests in Western Oregon store nearly as much carbon, per acre, as do the National Forests. The Obama Administration has put those plans on hold.
But the real top dogs of carbon storage? They are the Pacific Northwest’s National Parks. Crater Lake, Mt. Rainier, Olympic and the North Cascades National Parks store an average 644 metric tons of carbon dioxide per acre.
Here’s irony for you. Anderson says the Forest Service collected the data not to evaluate carbon storage, but to see how much potential National Forests have for logging.
Thanks to the Public News Service for the tip!
Wilderness Society Video: A Visit To One Of America’s Top Ten Carbon Storing Forests
