Planting trees and suppressing wildfires do not necessarily maximise the carbon storage of natural ecosystems. A new study has found that prescribed burning can actually lock in or increase carbon in the soils of temperate forests, savannahs and grasslands. […]
“Using controlled burns in forests to mitigate future wildfire severity is a relatively well-known process. But we’ve found that in ecosystems including temperate forests, savannahs and grasslands, fire can stabilise or even increase soil carbon,” said Dr Adam Pellegrini in the University of Cambridge’s Department of Plant Sciences, first author of the report.
He added: “Most of the fires in natural ecosystems around the globe are controlled burns, so we should see this as an opportunity. Humans are manipulating a process, so we may as well figure out how to manipulate it to maximise carbon storage in the soil.”
Fire burns plant matter and organic layers within the soil, and in severe wildfires this leads to erosion and leaching of carbon. It can take years or even decades for lost soil carbon to re-accumulate. But the researchers say that fires can also cause other transformations within soils that can offset these immediate carbon losses, and may stabilise ecosystem carbon.
I thought it was Science!!!
it doesn’t matter, since our “betters” have declared that Canada’s Forests don’t count for the purposes of carbon reduction, which we can blame on Jean Cretin
A little over thirty years ago on the BC Coast, spring burning was common-place. They were difficult to get started but they did the job of hazard abatement (getting rid of fine fuels) and making it much easier for tree planters. They also didn’t burn deep and were easier to contain and extinguish unlike fall burns. That all went away due to public pressure and therefore political pressure. The burning permitting is so onerous now that it couldn’t be done if you wanted to. So instead, the summers are smoky from wildfire, mostly in the interior. Given that the forestry “profession” is now mostly drunk on the CAGW Kool-Aid, who knows what direction the politicians will steer them but it’s unlikely that science will have anything to do with it.
John,
As a treeplanter back in those days, I can attest that it indeed made it easier to plant, but we all got so damn sooty that we looked like Blackie every day.
Our politicians are like one huge giant turd that interferes in everything.
Had they not done so, WOW this country could have been quite amazing in using and innovation rather than following the destructive path of we are currently on that can only fail spectacularly as MANY factors they choose to ignore on purpose.
Since when has a politician ever listened and acted on a Canadian idea?
Not in an extremely long time as they follow the bought experts that were pushing a bogus climate warming narrative which they have never questioned it’s stupidity as the mainstream media propaganda is all powerful.
It is illegal to harvest or mine anything and far easier to import but that still fails in the MASSIVE AMOUNT of material to have roads that all use machinery that aren’t electric yet. From shipping to trucking to plows and our politicians think they can change it all in a couple years.
The most dangerous politicians are the ones who want to leave their mark. Their mark is always akin to the urine stain on your best sofa.
I’ve stood on ground after a hot bushfire, that had been reduced to the consistency and sterility of beach sand for 6”. The same hot, dry conditions that produce big, intense, uncontrollable fires, result in soil so dry that ALL the organic matter burns.
Prescription burns, done when the soil and humus are damp, retain all the soil carbon and do not kill standing timber.
Heaven save us from theoreticians and dogmatists who have never left their air-conditioned offices.
Exactly right. The theoreticians showed their worst side when so many Bureau of Land Management staffers and bureaucrats housed in Washington, DC resisted Trumps insistence that they move to Grand Junction, Colorado a year or two ago. God forbid they actually set foot upon the millions of acres of the American West for which they are responsible.
PeterW….Graham Hancock has studied the ancient civilizations in the Amazon rain forest. According to his studies, the ancients actually created a VERY beneficial man-made earth called Terra Preta by slow-burning damp vegetation (what other kind of vegetation would there be in a RAIN forest). the result would be the ancient version of Miracle-Grow
Don’t just stand there, go plant a tree.
Only 8.5 million of two billion trees promised by PM have been planted
It is now January 2021, what are we up to now after the big push in December?
There’s those Green Jobs Democrats have been promising for decades.
Humans are manipulating a process, so we may as well figure out how to manipulate it to maximise carbon storage in the soil
How about we stop manipulating things based on utter bullshit Lysenkoism?
Masters of the Obvious, is it not?
The high temperature, high intensity fires of recent decades are a result of unwise suppression of fires, thereby leading to far greater fuel burdens than is the case in nature. The ready erosion of soils sterilized and destabilized by high intensity fires was apparent in Colorado when, the year after an horrific fire on the west side of Colorado Springs, heavy rains flooded the Manitou Springs area, and an equally horrific but short-lived flood carried cars and their occupants down the canyon below Pike’s Peak.
Very interesting I would point out that his publication from earlier in the year says something a little different
https://www.cam.ac.uk/research/news/forests-long-term-capacity-to-store-carbon-is-dropping-in-regions-with-extreme-annual-fires