Future forests may soak up more carbon dioxide than previously believed, helping to buffer climate…

[OKIsItJustMe]

http://ns.umich.edu/htdocs/releases/story.php?id=8614

Oct. 13, 2011

U-M ecologist: Future forests may soak up more carbon dioxide than previously believed, helping to buffer climate change

ANN ARBOR, Mich.—North American forests appear to have a greater capacity to soak up heat-trapping carbon dioxide gas than researchers had previously anticipated.

As a result, they could help slow the pace of human-caused climate warming more than most scientists had thought, a U-M ecologist and his colleagues have concluded.

The results of a 12-year study at an experimental forest in northeastern Wisconsin challenge several long-held assumptions about how future forests will respond to the rising levels of atmospheric carbon dioxide blamed for human-caused climate change, said University of Michigan microbial ecologist Donald Zak, lead author of a paper published online this week in Ecology Letters.

"Some of the initial assumptions about ecosystem response are not correct and will have to be revised," said Zak, a professor at the U-M School of Natural Resources and Environment and the Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology in the College of Literature, Science, and the Arts.

…

[libinnyandia]

1. trees to the rescue

How much will that postpone the worst case scenarios. And didn't Reagan blame trees for pollution. The GOP will want to cut down thsoe trees.

[OKIsItJustMe]

4. I don’t think it will postpone things much

As is frequently pointed out, things already appear to be happening faster than expected, so… (assuming the trees are already postponing developments, that means that things won’t happen as much faster than expected as they might have otherwise.)

As for Reagan… well… let’s just say there was a (very) small grain of truth in what he said.
"Approximately 80 percent of our air pollution stems from hydrocarbons released by vegetation."

What he was talking about was “http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smog#Photochemical_smog">photochemical smog.” The scoop is that vegetation can give off http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Volatile_organic_compound#Biologically_generated_VOCs">Volatile Organic Compounds.

[libinnyandia]

2. trees to the rescue pt 2

What if we have more droughts and the trees burn?

[FiveGoodMen]

3. What makes anyone think that TPTB will allow future forests?

Can't make enough money on them.

[jwirr]

5. That is good news. Now they need to use some other important

species of tree (fruit, nut, etc) to see if they are going to survive the future. At least we will have maple sugar and shade trees.

[truedelphi]

6. What future forests? I am sure in theory what they're saying could be

True, but in reality every thirty seconds we lose another piece of Amazon forest the size of a football field.

And when the XL Pipeline goes through, North America's number one boreal forest will be destroyed as well. Once the water table is gone, the trees will simply slowly die - as they cannot exist off of a diesel fuel-tainted aquifer.

[applegrove]

7. There was a map of the great forests of the world that showed

New England all reforested. I did not know that forests there have taken over from farms.