Natural History on the Big Screen – Feedback Loops: Forests
Aired May 19, 2021
Naimah Muhammad:
My name is Naimah Muhammad. I'm one of the Public Programs Coordinators at the National Museum of Natural History, and it's our pleasure to host today's program around the film Feedback Loops: Forest, presented in collaboration with the film team and with the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History. Tonight's program launches a four-part series that we'll be offering this summer, this month through May through August with one program each month. And the series will feature the feedback loops, short films, which explore various feedback loops across forest, oceans, atmospheres and more, and offering conversations with leading climate scientists who will share their work and solutions for the future. Before the program, we hope you were able to watch the short film for Forest and the introduction film, but if not, don't worry. We will send you an email with the link after today's program and you can watch at your convenience.
And if you haven't already signed up, we'll drop a link in the Q&A to inform you about our upcoming programs and we'll also make sure to share that in the email as well. So again, speaking of the Q&A, this is where we will communicate with you any relevant links mentioned by the speakers during the program, and that's also where we ask that you please submit your questions at any time in the program that we can get through as many as possible. We're looking forward to having this conversation with you. Before we get started, a few housekeeping notes. This discussion does offer closed captioning, and you can turn those on or off hitting the CC live transcript button, which is located at the bottom of the Zoom interface or at the top if you are on mobile. Also, to help direct your questions when you submit them, please let us know who the question is for by including the panelist name as tonight's program will begin with the moderated conversation facilitated by our host, Dr. Bill Moomaw, and then follow with a chance to take your questions.
So let's get started. I'd like to go ahead and introduce our moderator and our panelist and then invite them all on screen here. Dr. Bill Moomaw is Emeritus Professor of International Environmental Policy and founding director of the Center for International Environment and Resource Policy at Fletcher. He currently serves as co-director of the Global Development and Environment Institute at Tufts, which he co-founded. He chairs the board of directors of two climate science and policy organizations, the first being the Climate Group North America and the Woodwell Climate Research Center. He began working on climate change in 1988 as the first director of the climate program at the World Resources Institute in Washington. And he has been a lead author of five Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, also known as IPCC reports. The IPCC shared the Noble Peace Prize for its climate work in 2007.
He is currently working on natural solutions to climate change with a focus on increasing carbon dioxide removal and sequestration by forest, wetlands and soils to compliment emission reductions from land use changes and replacing fossil fuels with zero carbon renewable energy. And Bill, you can go ahead and join me on screen here and I'll go ahead and introduce our next panelist, Dr. Beverly Law, who is featured in the film, whom I'm sure you saw is Professor Emeritus of Global Change Biology and Terrestrial Systems Science at Oregon State University. She has been a lead author of the National Climate Assessment and has served on IPCC expert panels on forest carbon accounting protocols and forest disturbance. She's a fellow of the American Geophysical Union and the Earth Leadership Program. She has over 230 publications on old growth forest as global carbon sinks, carbon stocks and fluxes in different forest types and ages and vulnerability of forest at different ages to climate wildfire and management.
Her research also focuses on forest carbon accounting and land new strategies to mitigate and adapt to climate change while supporting biodiversity and promoting ecosystem resilience to climate change. Her research team combines intensive field observations, inventories and satellite data with land system modeling to predict response of ecosystems to changing climate and management across the regions. Dr. Kristina Anderson-Teixeira specializes in forest ecosystem ecology, global change, ecology and climate protection through forest conservation. Her approach combines data synthesis and analysis, quantitative ecology and field research, and focuses on understanding how climate and climate change shape ecosystems and how ecosystems in turn regulate climate and are so important. She leads ecosystems and climate research initiative for the forest Global Earth Observatory, also known as ForestGEO as I know it at the Smithsonian. And leveraging this unique global forest monitoring network to understand forest response and feedbacks to climate research.
Things include carbon cycling and forest worldwide forest disturbance and recovery dynamics under changing climate and valuing forest for their climate regulation services. Lastly, our third panelist, Dr. Lola Fatoyinbo, is a research physical scientist in the Biospheric Sciences lab at NASA GSFC, where she studies forest ecology and ecosystem structure using active and passive remote sensing instruments, serves on satellite mission science teams, and principal investigator on several NASA Earth Science division funded research grants.
Her research is focused on characterizing the vulnerability and response of coastal ecosystems to disturbance from land use and climate change using Lidar and SAR remote sensing of upland and coastal ecosystem structure and carbon stocks. In 2012, she was the recipient of the presidential early career award in science and engineering for her efforts on emerging scientific priorities with advanced technology to develop innovative remote sensing instrumentation for carbon cycle and ecosystem science. So as you see, we have a great panel of experts who can take us from satellite vision to the ground and I am looking forward to the conversation. So at this point, everyone can go ahead and turn their cameras on and we will go ahead and get started.
And Bill, just unmute yourself.
Bill Moomaw:
Greetings, everyone, and welcome to this very important set of presentations by three prominent forest scientists. The remarkable video series, Climate Emergency: Feedback Loops, documents the amplifying feedbacks that are accelerating global warming. That is the warming that is increasing the warming. And as we know, the Arctic is warming most rapidly and the loss of arctic sea ice is causing much more heat to be absorbed from the sun. And the loss of snow cover is also changing that reflectivity. This, in turn, is causing soils in the arctic permafrost release methane and other gases in the temperate zone, the tropical zone, the water forest are increasing respiration. So in 2019, I joined four colleagues in publishing a paper declaring a climate emergency because the trends of leading to feedback loops that are increasing far more rapidly than any of us I think ever anticipated. Our statement has been endorsed by 13,800 scientists from 156 countries, because as a group, scientists are very concerned about these changes and how rapidly they're occurring.
And it's clear that reducing emissions of greenhouse gases, the heat tracking gases from fossil fuels is important along with other gases like methane and other things discussed in the videos. But in addition, we cannot slow and stop warming unless we increase the removal of carbon dioxide, and that's the role of forests. And the concern is that the feedbacks in the warming are decreasing the capacity of forests to do so. At this time though, forests along with other terrestrial ecosystems like wetlands and grasslands annually are removing about 31% of the amount of carbon dioxide we put in the atmosphere. Every single year, another 25% is removed by the ocean, so a little less than half of what we put in appears as an increase annually, but 15% of human emissions are, I think in the video, it says 17%, something in that range is due to deforestation and land use change.
And so that's something that we have to deal with and we'll talk about that during the program. And what's of concern is that some of our forests, for example, Southeast Asian topical forests, have already become net sources. They're emitting more carbon dioxide than they're removing. And as the video points out in the Amazon, the Amazonian forest is tiering on the brink between being a sink and a source for carbon dioxide. And so the real question that we're trying to address here is, can the world's forests do the essential job of slowing these feedbacks? So we're fortunate to benefit from these three prominent forest researchers who will share their insights. And I'd like to open with a question to each of you, and actually we'll just go in order. I'll call on each of you individually, but in your research, what do you find to be the largest feedback associated with the changes you're observing in forests? Dr. Kristina Anderson-Teixeira, would you like to go first, please?
Kristina Anderson-Teixeira:
Yeah, sure. Well, I study forests around the world and in general, I'm most concerned about disturbances. So droughts, fires, major storms. These are linked to climate change and increasing as a result of climate change. And in recent years, we've seen some very dramatic and heartbreaking examples of droughts and fires having in storms having large impacts both on, not only on forests, but on human societies as well. So I know that's on a lot of people's minds. These disturbances have an outsized impact on forests. And normally, in the past, under historical climates, these would be normal, natural and forests would tend to recover. But the question is with climate change, will they recover the way that they used to what they would've in the past? And in some cases, yes, but in other cases, climate change can prevent them from recovering as they would've in the past. And so that's a really large impact. For example, in some of the more airid regions of the western U.S., after a large forest fire it may be too dry for forest to reestablish.
Bill Moomaw:
Okay.
Kristina Anderson-Teixeira:
That's a big one.
Bill Moomaw:
Good, thank you. Thank you. Let me turn to Dr. Lola Fatoyinbo.
Lola Fatoyinbo:
Yes, thank you. I think I can only second what Christina said and that it's really seeing some of these effects of the extreme events and how those ecosystems that we study who might have historically been able to withstand these events are not really able to withstand them anymore. And as you mentioned before, I do a lot of work in wetlands and especially in coastal wetlands, and these are areas that are thought to or supposed to be protecting us from the effect of extreme events, let's say a hurricane, for example. And when these events become either to intense or too common, these coastal wetlands are not always able to recover in the ways that they used to, and at the same time, not able to absorb carbon in the same way they used to. And so this leads to one of those feedback loops that we're very worried about.
Bill Moomaw:
Thank you. Thank you, Dr. Beverly Law.
Beverly Law:
Hello. Well, we found a couple of things. Harvest is the major source of forest emissions in the Pacific Northwest and the western U.S., And we found that harvest related emissions have averaged five times fire emissions from the three western coast states combined. And that's including this most recent decade of when fires have been pretty bad. In addition to that, we found with our modeling of vulnerability to drought and fire under future climate across western U.S., that it varies. It's not high everywhere, and there are areas in the Pacific Northwest and in the northern Rockies and other areas that are just not as vulnerable. So I think we try to tamp down the fear factor when you're thinking, it's not like that everywhere.
Bill Moomaw:
Good. Thank you. Off to a good start. As you can all see, there's a forester playing a huge role, but they are having beginning to struggle. So we really need to address climate change very rapidly in order to maintain the benefits that we're getting from forest in addressing climate change. We need to turn this these damaging, accelerating feedbacks into diminishing feedback loops that are accelerating the removal of carbon dioxide. Let me return here to you, Christina. As we see in the film and in your work, the climate's produced by tropical forest are changing as trees are cut down and becoming drier, causing more warming and drying. Can you tie this research to the feedback loops? I mean, are things, in the video, there's one very interesting disturbing presentation about what's happening, for example, in the Amazon.
Kristina Anderson-Teixeira:
Yeah, well, I'll start by saying that forests are just amazing, that they're not only influenced by climate, but they also create their own internal micro climate where it's on a hot day, it's going to be cooler moisture, less windy under forest canopy, and they also influence the climate on local to global scales. So for example, the Amazon forest creates rain for itself as well as for much of South America and even affects rainfall in the U.S. and other parts of the world. It's really important to the global climate system. So when forests are lost from cutting or from natural disturbances, we're not just putting more carbon dioxide into the air and creating warming in that sense, we're also affecting the biophysical feedbacks as we call them, which are the ways that energy balance and the hydrology of Earth on local to global scales. And in some cases, that can be even more important than the carbon. So yeah, I'll stop with that.
Bill Moomaw:
Okay. All right. I actually saw a report estimating that the atmospheric flow of water vapor from the Amazonian forest is equal to, or perhaps slightly greater than the river flow of water into the Atlantic ocean every day, every year, which is an astounding factor, but that's diminishing as the forest gets drier and more open. And at some point, there's fear that we may reach a point where it won't be wet enough to be a forest. I mean, that could be a serious problem.
Kristina Anderson-Teixeira:
And would also have large economic impacts in South America.
Bill Moomaw:
So yeah, I've been in Rio when the reservoirs ran dry and there was not enough electricity, and they turned the street lights off at night, so we didn't go out, but still major problem. Lola, could you say something? I mean, since you work in mangrove forest, coastal forest and wetlands, could you say a little bit more about that, as to what their vulnerability is and anything you've seen that might mitigate that?
Lola Fatoyinbo:
Sure. So I guess thinking about the theme and what feedback loops are in coastal forests and in wetlands, these are very much tied to water resources and hydrology. So how much water is available and how often are they being inundated? I work in mangrove forests, these are the equivalent to the salt marshes that we have on the eastern U.S. ... Well, all over the U.S. And there's some mangrove forest in Florida, for example. And these usually get hammered by, let's say hurricanes on a regular basis. We've heard about many of the hurricanes had a very active season last year. And generally speaking, these coastal wetlands really protect us from tidal waves, storm surges, they essentially act as a buffer because they have these really big root systems that take up a lot of the wave energy, for example. And then they're also able to keep up with natural sea level rise or changes in sea level where naturally if you have, let's say, an increase in sea level rise mangroves and salt marshes or other coastal wetlands, they would kind of follow the tidal lines.
So as far as those salt water goes, that's how far these ecosystems will move kind of inland. And similarly, if you have a decrease in sea level, these ecosystems might also move in whichever direction the water is. They can also move seaward, both seaward and landward if they have enough sediment to grow on. But it really all depends on what rate this is happening. So one thing that we're really worried about right now is that if you have really rapid sea level rise happening, mangroves are not able to keep up with that anymore, especially on the side that's in the ocean because they're not able, essentially, to grow fast enough to keep up with sea level rise. Again, it's kind of a complicated issue. It depends on where you are, but generally speaking, that's one of the fears that we have.
And then the other thing that happens when you have a loss of mangrove forests, these are also really, really high carbon stocks. They're one of the most, if not the most, carbon dense ecosystems because they have a lot of carbon in the trees themselves, but also below ground, they're able to accumulate a lot of the carbon in the soils. So essentially, you end up with kind of a feedback loop in that sense because you end up with sea level, you have the climate effect of sea level rise, which is destroying the mangroves. And then these mangroves are no longer able to have their carbon absorption quality and essentially release even more carbon into the atmosphere.
Bill Moomaw:
Okay, so the forest having hard time keeping up with the rising sea level?
Lola Fatoyinbo:
Yeah, we're really trying to make sure that they're ... to see how we can keep up with rising seas.
Bill Moomaw:
Right. Okay, thank you. Beverly, you mentioned the Pacific Northwest, a lot of discussion about the Tongass National Forest. Incredible temperate rainforest in southeast Alaska. What role does that play in addressing climate and in how vulnerable is it and what are the feedbacks affecting?
Beverly Law:
Oh, well, the Tongass accounts for about 8% of the U.S. forest carbon uptake. So it's pretty big and a lot of the area is ... So it has high carbon density, just like the other Pacific Northwest coastal forest, and they have higher carbon density than all the tropical forest that we've worked on. That's carbon per unit area. But in addition to that, Tongass has over a pretty large area, it has the largest national forest in the U.S. So there's a lot of concern about the continued cutting that's going on up there. It's amazing how much is happening on Prince of Wales Island and other areas.
We just finished a paper on this and for publication, and I call them the Gold Coast. The gold coast of carbon, it's along the coastal areas. They're better buffered, there's more humidity in the atmosphere, just this sheer size of the ocean and the humidity that surrounds them. The vapor pressure deficits are quite low, so it doesn't affect them very much, but they're also the most heavily logged force, as it's said in the film, there's hope for the temperate force because of what's happening in the two extremes and the tropics and the northern latitudes. But when you look at the harvesting that we're doing in these forests, we're not really a climate smart way of doing things.
Bill Moomaw:
Okay, thank you. Just want to ask each of you in the time we have before we take questions from the viewers to say something about what you see as solutions for the particular forest that you work in. So let's start with Kristina.
Kristina Anderson-Teixeira:
Okay. Well, speaking of forests globally, the main message here is that we need to protect and restore forests around the world and when we can and if it makes sense. Now there are priorities. So the old growth, high biomass forests such as the ones in the film that have lot works on and a lot of tropical forests are also tends to be on average very high biomass and very important for their hydraulic consequences. So protecting these old growth forests is super important. And then managing forests to reduce the risks of tree mortality and climate feedback. So managing fire, reducing the spread of invasive pests and pathogens and so forth. And then finally, in places where it makes sense, allowing forests to either naturally regenerate or helping with replanting to. So those are the things we can do. How we do it is more of a social economic political problem. And I won't get into that at this moment.
Bill Moomaw:
We'll say that maybe for the end. Lola, what do you think?
Lola Fatoyinbo:
Yeah, so I can only second what Kristina had said. I think we probably all agree that there are essentially conservation or protection of existing forested areas is really critical, as well as restoration of areas that have been destroyed or potentially new areas that are available for reforestation or restoration. In the case of mangrove forest or coastal wetlands, a lot of the areas that were previously occupied by wetlands or coastal or mangroves are now occupied by humans. So there isn't really that much space for them to ... or that much area where we can really do a reforestation project. But there has also been, let's say, a creation of new land, and there might be areas because of changes in the way we use the land and the way that the land has changed from natural and climate change related changes that we could potentially have new areas where forests could be restored.
But I think, when you focus really on the restoration side, one thing that we are seeing is that in addition or in parallel to planting or even preferred to having big planting campaigns, we're seeing that restoring natural conditions or essentially allowing for natural regeneration in certain areas is really affected. So when you work in mangrove forest, for example, one of the best ways to restore an area that has been destroyed or that has died off is to change the hydrology or to change the way that the water flows or restore the original water flow in this region. And that really allows for, essentially, get seeds that come in by their own and then the forest regenerates by itself. So I think you have to take an approach where there's a diversity of solutions and allow for multiple solutions in this case.
Bill Moomaw:
Okay, thank you. And Beverly, if there's a part of this, which is, I like your response to this, but then something that I know you've also been working on is the role of biodiversity in forest.
Bill Moomaw:
So we were looking at the carbon potential of forest under future climate and when we looked at the ones that had the highest carbon density with low to moderate vulnerability to drought or fire in the future, they would store the most carbon and the biggest, they're the best candidates for preservation. But in addition to that, they also have the highest biodiversity and critical habitat so that those are two really important factors and they go hand in hand and we have dual crises going on and so it just makes sense. Those should be high priority for biodiversity, as well as for carbon.
Yeah, I don't work in the field of biodiversity directly, but I have just been stunned by these analyses that the world has lost 60% of its vertebrate populations since 1970. And that's just a stunning number. North America's lost 3 billion birds, 1 billion of them from our forest species.
Beverly Law:
3 billion since I was a kid. That's scary.
Bill Moomaw:
It's more than that since I was a kid because I'm older at all of you, but to me, it's even a greater loss, I think. Well, thank you all. Let's turn to the audience and we have some questions in here. I'll read a couple few of those and I'll ask, I guess anyone can volunteer who would like to answer the question and I'll just call on one of you if that's all right. So the first audience question is, "I have heard that forests, writ large, are not truly carbon sinks, as they also produce carbon dioxide at night. They're at best a net-zero emission. Is that true? If so, perhaps forests are carbon stores and not sinks." This illustrates the confusion between stocks and flows. Beverly, I know you've worked to try to clarify this a lot. So let me call on you.
Beverly Law:
So they're talking about the fluxes and that's what we measure, the net of respiration and photosynthesis and forests from these towers above the canopies and they're 500 in the Americas, and about a thousand of these sites globally now. I was head of the AmeriFlux network and we find that when they're young forests, so say, you've cleared it and it's growing back and then up to 20 years old, they're a net source to the atmosphere. So with the net source for 10 to 20 years after clearing, and it's because that respiration from soil is so much larger than the net uptake by the trees. So that's a problem.
That's where people get it mixed up. They think, well, the young trees grow faster. Know what, per unit ground area, no, there isn't more carbon taken up by young trees. And in addition to that, they're a net source for quite some time after you've harvested them where fire has come through. So I mean that's the biggest thing that's real value of having these kinds of measurements and you're not only measuring that net flux, but you're also measuring the physiology of the trees that are in the forest and the soil respiration. So we know where it's coming from.
Bill Moomaw:
So would you say that... And I think there's some confusion over when as a forest carbon cycle. People talk about mature forests and old growth forest and saying, Oh well when they get old, they don't take up any carbon anymore.
Beverly Law:
That's rom the old days. We heard that long before when I started forestry school in the seventies. We're not decadent, the trees aren't either, so. You know they're big. We try to describe it as the rind gets skinnier as a new year of growth comes on a tree. But those trees are huge and it's putting on wood on the branches, the stems and the roots. So they still have higher carbon stocks and accumulation. And only when we've looked at a forest where it's been cut, where they removed all the under story trees and just left a few of the big trees, of course that was going to reduce that net carbon or the net accumulation of that forest, but it's still storing a lot more carbon and that's carbon that's not in the atmosphere.
Bill Moomaw:
Good, thank you. I think that's very clarifying. Let me go to the next question. "Referring to some comments made by Dennis Meadows a number of years ago. He said that there was enough carbon dioxide already in the atmosphere to cause the temperature to increase to where the methane would be released from melting permafrost. And that meant that the two degrees C was already impossible to avoid. Was he wrong? Has new information been discovered since he said it? New technology that could be used to mitigate?" I don't know. Christina, would you like to take a try at that? Really none of you are working on the Arctic, but it's certainly part of a major feedback. So are we doomed? I guess it's really the other question big here.
Kristina Anderson-Teixeira:
Yeah, I'm not a good person to answer that specific question. I don't know if either.
Bill Moomaw:
Okay.
Kristina Anderson-Teixeira:
To be honest here.
Bill Moomaw:
Who else would like to take a crack at it?
Beverly Law:
Well, I'll go ahead. You could too, Bill. Methane emissions are concern of the melting of the permafrost. And that's why there was a NASA project on that 20, 30 years ago that they were recognizing this is something to be very concerned about. But there's another methane problem and that's what we're causing, and I think that's something that we can control right now. We have to slow that down. It has to do with the refining and it's in these areas, methane leaks and pipes going down to San Francisco. We saw these spikes and wondered what that regular pattern was, the leaking pipes, methane, direct methane emissions. So there are things we can control right now and directly and we have to do the best that we can to try and deal with that.
Bill Moomaw:
The other advantage of dealing with methane ... there was a new book out about short points out that it. The half life of methane is about seven or eight years. And so that means that we stop putting that in seven or eight years, whatever we put in and when half of it is gone, eight years down to quarter. And whereas carbon dioxide is estimated that maybe something like three percent of those will still be here over a thousand years from now. So we do need to address the ... some call that the sprint we have to do the sprint in the next 10 years and it is the short lived gases that are important.
All right, here's another question. Have any remediation approach ... oh, there was one other aspect of that. Are there technologies? There are technologies that are discussed like reactor catalyst technology are examples of this around the world. It's very expensive, it's very costly and it is very energy intensive. So I don't object to our doing research on this, but I don't want to get people's hopes up that it certainly will not be here in time for the next 10 years and we have to make a difference and probably not at scale even by 30 years. But we already have forests been doing this job for what, 3 million years the forest been around.
So here's another question. "Have any remediation approaches proven successful or promising? By that, I mean, not just stopping the damaging activities but burning, clearing, harvesting, but planting trees in strategic areas or focusing on saving or spreading specific trees?"
Naimah Muhammad:
I'm so sorry to cut in, but Bill, we're getting a lot of audience comments about the audio. Can you speak a little clearer or closer to the mic?
Bill Moomaw:
Okay. Is this better? Is this better?
Naimah Muhammad:
Yeah, that's that's much better. Sorry.
Bill Moomaw:
I'm sorry. Okay, I'll get closer to my computer here. All right, so would anyone care to respond to this? Are there things we can do beyond, not damaging, but how effective will planting more trees be? Let's focus in on that part.
Beverly Law:
Well, we did an analysis of preserving forests, reducing harvest on federal lands by 50%, doubling harvest cycles, reforestation and a forest station. The first two were the most effective. So doubling the harvest cycle of current harvest cycles and preserving the forest, reducing harvest on federal lands. Reforest came in third. But what we were doing was reforesting areas that had recently been cut or had been recently killed by fire. So what you worry about though when you talk about reforestation is what people will do to get credit for that, is they'll end up cutting forest and reforesting to get credit. That's the biggest concern. Some things we think of... So idealistically and then you look at how it might play out on the ground and it's something completely different.
Bill Moomaw:
Gaming the system is a real problem, which I think is also a problem with any kind of offset because offsets don't change the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, even if they're successful. They just keep it the same. And we have to be going beyond that if we're going to really address this problem.
Lola Fatoyinbo:
I just really want to kind of second this point and really mention that, we often hear about these tree planting initiatives and obviously we're all forest ecologists, we really love trees, we want forest more trees to be on this planet. However, it's really important for people to understand that, at first, we need to work on curbing deforestation. That's like the number one thing. There needs to be less deforestation before we even start talking about replanting. And at the same time, you also don't want to just go out and plant trees everywhere because certain areas are just not made for trees to be planted. So it has to be a really careful analysis I think when you're doing some of these projects or reforestation projects. I'm seeing questions here about planting trees in Greenland and when I hear that I've just, my eyes went big and I thought, oh my gosh, that's not a good idea.
Bill Moomaw:
Greenland, Antarctica, the Sahara Desert, not good locations for planting trees.
Lola Fatoyinbo:
Ecological consequences. Really, really huge consequences.
Bill Moomaw:
Right? There's usually a reason that trees aren't growing in a place unless we're responsible for removing them. But even the nature, there are places because of water, because of climate, whatever it is. So here's another question. "Well, some people claim that well we'll cut down these trees, but we'll plant some more trees over here. Doesn't that solve the problem or we'll reforest the ones we have and certainly we should do that. But what does that mean in terms of the carbon balance?" Kristina, do you want to jump in?
Kristina Anderson-Teixeira:
I mean it's much more effective to preserve existing forests, particularly those old growth forests, then to reforest. Yeah, I think that's a point we've all been making that's really worth hammering home.
Bill Moomaw:
Right. Yeah, I see everybody smiling and nodding here. I guess you're all in agreement on that one. So here's another question here. "Really viable to pre-plant trees for changing climate. This is the one about Greenland, but basically, let me rephrase that a little bit. Where we are planting, planting or reforesting, should we be planting different species or should we ... and basically, you've just published a very important paper on natural reforestation versus manage deforestation ..." I've been a co-author on that paper. "So what do you think? Should we combine the reforestation with judgment about what should happen next? I know there's a big project going in northern Minnesota right now, for example, that's attempting to do this." Kristina, do you want to just comment on that?
Kristina Anderson-Teixeira:
Yeah, well, I mean in some places where the forest would naturally regenerate, I think the best strategy would be to leave it to regenerate naturally. And particularly, for example, in the tropics where with high species diversity and many different strategies of these species to deal with climate climatic variation, having that diversity that would come in naturally is really important. But in some places, it might be strategically wise to do some planting where forest otherwise wouldn't come back. But at the same time, this needs to be guided by science because there's also no point in planting trees in a place where they're going to be killed by drought a year later.
Bill Moomaw:
Beverly or all of you, would you want to chime in on that one?
Beverly Law:
Yeah, with the planting ... Oops, because we ran into this on the Biscuit fire. It was a 200,000 hectare fire and we were very much concerned about the planning because it's a hugely diverse area in southwestern Oregon. Huge diversity, not just species, but varieties, genetic diversity. And you want that to come back naturally because you're not going to be able to get that kind of diversity that's needed to make it through and to become resilient to climate change.
Bill Moomaw:
So, maybe it would make sense to think that way in terms of maybe planting urban trees or parkland trees, but maybe not in natural forest like the one I see behind Kristina or the northeastern forest that usually behind me.
Naimah Muhammad:
I'm going to jump in just for audio reasons to help us get through some of these last questions, and Bill, that means you can participate, I hope you can be on the answering side. I'm just going to help out here with a few more of our outstanding audience questions. So Beverly, there's a question to you and it is, "The film comments and mentions forest in Southeast United States, being harvested for pellets that are exported and burned to generate electricity. Are wood pellets carbon neutral?
Beverly Law:
No, they're not. For the jillionth time of those of us who have been working on bioenergy carbon accounting, it is not. It's not carbon neutral. You are removing trees that take a long time to regrow and some in the Southeast, some of what they're removing, of course, it makes sense to have it close enough to the facility, but the facilities are fixed and they started removing bottom land hardwoods, which are incredibly diverse and valuable for wildlife and they've been there for hundreds of years, kind of what happens. So if you remove a 75-year-old forest, it's not going to be growing back in 20 years or 10 years. That's not going to work. Even when you harvest a 20-year-old forest, it's going to take a while to come back to that time, and we don't have that time. We only have the next 10 to 30 years to change things and really increase the carbon uptake, not put more carbon in the atmosphere.
Naimah Muhammad:
And I'm glad you mentioned this removal process and how detrimental this all is because Lola, we have a related question for you. And that's this clear cutting for wood pellets. "Is this influencing the forest where you work and contributing to the erosion that we're seeing in the mangrove forest?"
Lola Fatoyinbo:
So there are some regions actually where mangroves are cut for wood pellets because as it turns out that their properties that make them trees that are able to survive in this really dynamic and waterlogged conditions make their wood really hard, which makes really good wood pellets and also really great wood for char charcoal. So it's used a lot for making charcoal both industrial and on a non-industrial scale.
Bill Moomaw:
I've been working with the people in the Southeast now for about, well since about 2014. And my trainee's a chemist, I was a chemist before I really got into working on forests and things. And there's a very simple problem here with the carbon balance. If you say how much heat do I get and how much carbon dioxide do I get from burning wood versus coal, it turns out to produce the same amount of heat. You get slightly more carbon dioxide by burning wood than by burning coal. And then, you have also that what's not taken into account is not only, the loss of carbon that goes into the atmosphere immediately when you burn it, but the foregone growth that would've taken place by those, what let's say 40-year-old or 50-year-old trees going to become, if they're 50-year-old trees, to get them back, you have to grow them for another 50 years.
Well, if you take a 50-year-old tree and grow it to a hundred years, you store and accumulate far more carbon that will be there if you cut it and then have regrowth. So there's some very flawed arguments in that argument. And unfortunately, governments in Europe and some of the United States are actually paying subsidies to make the conversion from wood to coal. And the wood burning has far more ultrafine particulate matter, and amazingly enough, these are often located in low income communities of color. And that's particularly true in the Southeast. And that's why there's a huge push there to try to halt this process. I mean, it's gone well beyond what you just put up your hand and say stop. But there's a huge effort to try to control this both here and in Europe.
Naimah Muhammad:
And later in our series, well, I know we'll be exploring more about climate change and equity and who is involved in those decision making and conversations. So a plug to join us, audience, in August for that program. But let's keep it going with another question here, and maybe Kristina, you can take this one first, and the question is, "What can we do locally to preserve urban forest and tree canopy, including biodiversity and understory?" Our audience member here is enjoying the wildflowers in the forest right now and wants to know what role do wildflowers play, if any, in forest preservation?
Kristina Anderson-Teixeira:
Okay, well, so I'd say, I mean that there's going to be some variability from place to place in terms of what needs to be done to preserve the local forests. I'm not sure where this question is coming from, but ...
Yeah, I mean, broadly speaking, there are conservation, there are lots of good conservation organizations that are working to protect forests. And so I guess, I'd point to those as a way to preserve forests. And also, in terms of the global forest conservation picture, I would point people to thinking about ... to understanding where the things that we consume come from originally and how that's all tied together globally. And the products that we consume are often linked to forests around the world. And so the day-to-day economic choices that we make are another way that we can help conserve forest around the world.
Naimah Muhammad:
Beverly, do you have any thoughts on that with your work in the field and on the ground or any additional comments?
Beverly Law:
My own forest is like that. A lot of wildflowers that you want to keep and the pollinators, you know it attracts pollinators and we're having a real problem with pollinators right now. So we're trying to get everybody to plant native species in their gardens instead of artificial species that they didn't coevolve with. So there are things like that that people can do. Like you said, they're local chapters of Sierra Club and Audubon society that are thinking about this and helping people.
Bill Moomaw:
Actually, in Costa Rica, they actually have done payment for ecosystem services that the banana plantations that allow forests to remain. The pollinators from the forest increase the productivity of the banana plantations. And as some of my ecology colleagues have pointed out, a forest is not just a bunch of trees, a forest is a complex ecosystem. And so if we don't have, whether it's wildflowers or fern or fungi or bacteria, it may be a stretch to call it a forest if it's missing some of those components. So thinking of it in its totality, it's really important. Good question.
Naimah Muhammad:
So I think, this might be our last question because it's a question for all, but we'll see afterwards. But it's really a nice question about optimism, which I think at this point we all need. The question is, "How do you sustain your spirit with such dire news coming in short succession?" And I'll just go in order here and Bill start with you first on my screen.
Bill Moomaw:
Well, since I've been living with this longer, I guess, than anybody else on the screen, it certainly is challenging. And I was basically a laboratory research scientist for the first half of my career, but I kept applying it to these environmental issues and it was the discovery of the potential solutions that gives me hope. And finally, halfway through my career, I made this decision to switch entirely and began working on climate change, first on technological solutions and then, later, on natural solutions. And when I discovered, in my own mind, other people had discovered this long before me, how important natural solutions are, that gave me a huge boost in terms of being able to cope with the bad news because probably the simplest thing we can do is to create these forest reserves. I mean it is the costly, it's at least amount of effort, but it may be among the hardest in terms of the political opposition and the economic imperatives.
Naimah Muhammad:
Thank you. Kristina, what keeps your spirits lifted and keeps your optimism engaged?
Kristina Anderson-Teixeira:
Well, I echo a similar message that the opportunity to be part of the solution to help inform solutions and to help move the needle at least just a little bit in terms of using science to help make these solutions to help fight climate change as best as we can. I mean that's worth fighting for.
Naimah Muhammad:
Beverly. Yeah, you're next.
Beverly Law:
Yeah, I guessed that...
It's moral obligation and I'm not a quitter. And so, I have faith that once we get enough people realizing that in all of our plates, we all have to deal with it. We all have to do something about it and change our ways. It's major paradigm shift, but these can be exciting times. So yeah, if we have one or if that's it.
Lola Fatoyinbo:
I guess it's my turn. So I guess, I would say, in my case, I just kind of have faith in all of those people coming after us. I think we've seen, in the past few years that the new generation ... I see my interns coming in, people working with me, they are so motivated. They have ideas, they are not passive. And so, I do have faith that some solutions will be found and minds will be changed. We're already seeing it that a lot of concepts that have been controversial a few years ago are now commonly accepted. So I do think that there's going to come that tipping point where change is just going to happen.
Naimah Muhammad:
I mean the audience, maybe find out more about this later, but I know the three of you are panelists. You've interacted with each other's work across your careers too, which, in itself is just really spectacular to me. So, thank you. So, Bill, I'm going to pose our last question to you, as the moderator and you know, you put a lot of thought into developing some of our pre-drafted questions and thinking about this panels, so I'm going to pose one to you... And looking ahead in November for the U.N. Climate change conference, which will be bringing parties together towards the goal of the Paris Agreement and the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change ... "What would you like to provide as your recommendation for forest and climates in this conversation as they look ahead?"
Bill Moomaw:
That's a really important part of the solution and it's the part is an international approach we've fallen down on the most. And in fact, I'd have to say, even in the United States ... we've, we're very technologically focused, and that's essential. There's no question about it. Although hoping that technology ... because technology created this problem, technology can solve it is, I think, naive. Because the planet is already doing half the work for us in terms of removing carbon dioxide every year from the atmosphere. And these other gases are of our own making except for things like methane that are created by the warming itself part of the feedback loop.
So I would advise them to, yes, and I think they have generally agree. And by the way, this new International Energy Agency report is just pathbreaking on the technological side. It just basically says what we have to do and it's really, really very good. But again, there's very little in that and there's very little that the international system is looking at in terms of forests and wetlands and wetlands. Again, I've been working with wetland scientists, amazing factoid, five to 7% of the Earth services wetlands stores 30% of all the soil carbon and there's far more soil carbon stored there than in everything else, including the atmosphere and other than the deep oceans. So it's really quite a remarkable set of opportunities we have. And I think that we should really have a big focus on a real effort to protect our existing forests and our wetlands and our soils more generally. They all can play an important role and let's stop calling them nature based solutions. They are nature's solutions and basically it on nature can lead to a lot of misconceptions. Thank you.
Naimah Muhammad:
Well, on that note of nature's solutions, I would like to thank the panelist here and Bill for moderating and joining us on the panel side and to the audience for being a part of this conversation. I also have to give a special thanks, of course, to the team behind the scenes who made this possible. To our donors, to our staff, and of course, to viewers like you who keep supporting what we're doing and making these conversations so meaningful and relevant.
I hope you'll join us for our upcoming programs in the series. The next one is in June, and we'll send email communications about that. And we've also put a link in the Q&A for you to learn more and sign up. After the webinar ends tonight, you'll see a survey pop up for feedback about the program, not a feedback loop, just feedback. We hope you'll take the time to let us know what you learned, what you enjoyed about the film, what you want to share with a friend, and we do go through these information to better inform our programs in the future. So on that note, thank you to everyone. Thank you, Lola, Beverly, Kristina, Bill, the Feedback Loops film team, and thank you audience, and we will see you soon. Bye everyone.
