New Data Highlights Role of Forests in Fight Against Climate Change

WASHINGTON, Oct. 15, 2010 - The USDA Forest Service today released new estimates of the total carbon storage of U.S. forests, highlighting the important role America's forests play in the fight against climate change. According to the new data, 41.4 billion metric tons of carbon is currently stored in the nation's forests, and due to both increases in the total area of forest land and increases in the carbon stored per acre, an additional 192 million metric tons of carbon are sequestered each year. The additional carbon sequestered annually offsets roughly 11 percent of the country's industrial greenhouse gas emissions, the equivalent of removing almost 135 million passenger vehicles from the nation's highways.

"America's forests play a critical role in combating climate change, collectively capturing and storing significant amounts of carbon that would otherwise pollute the atmosphere," said Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack. "Forest management on all lands can contribute significantly toward cooling a warming planet, and this new information will assist the public and policy makers as we work to address this significant issue."

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Painting by Ivan Shishkin
View of Valaam Island. Kukko. 1859.

Obama administration reverses Bush wilderness policy

DENVER (Reuters) - The Obama administration has restored U.S. land managers' powers to curb development on vast tracts of America's back country, undoing what conservation groups called a "no more wilderness" policy put in place under President George W. Bush.

U.S. Interior Secretary Ken Salazar announced on Thursday that the federal Bureau of Land Management (BLM) will again have the authority to set aside large areas of federally owned territory in the West that it deems deserving of wilderness protection.

It would still be up to Congress to decide whether to grant those areas formal wilderness status, putting them permanently off-limits to energy development and other commercial uses.

An official wilderness designation by law prohibits the building of roads or other structures, or any human activities that would alter the natural landscape, such as farming, logging, mining, or oil and gas drilling.

In years past, lands classified by BLM as eligible for such protection were to be protected as de facto wilderness until or unless Congress acted.

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Painting by Ivan Shishkin
View in the Vicinity of St. Petersburg. 1856

Climate Change Killing America's Trees at Ever Faster Rates

Trees in western North America are dying at faster and faster rates, and climate change is likely to blame.

The mounting deaths could fundamentally transform Western forests because tree reproduction hasn’t increased to offset losses, according to a new study published Thursday in Science. New seedlings aren’t rising quickly enough to fill the gaps.

“If current trends continue, forests will become sparser over time,” co-author Philip van Mantgem, an ecologist with the U.S. Geological Survey, said in a press conference call. This would be a setback in the fight against global warming because thinner forests with small, young trees store less carbon, so more heat-trapping carbon dioxide would cycle into the atmosphere.

A large-scale transition to such threadbare woods would have other negative effects as well, van Mantgem said. Species that depend on big stands of old growth, such as marbled murrelets and spotted owls, would have much less room to roam. And the risk of catastrophic fires would go up with more dead, dry wood lying around to fuel them.

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The Painting is by Henri Rousseau