Planning for impacts in US forests

Tim Kauffman in Federal Times: The government needs a comprehensive plan to address the potential damage of climate change on forests, parks and other federal lands, experts agree. Land-holding agencies such as the Forest Service, National Park Service and Bureau of Land Management have begun assessing the impact of climate change on public lands, but no comprehensive strategy exists for reducing greenhouse gas emissions or mitigating the harm of rising global temperatures.

Thomas Armstrong, senior adviser for global change programs at the Interior Department’s U.S. Geological Survey, said all agencies must work together, along with state and local agencies, to effectively tackle climate change. “It really is that large of a problem that we all need to be working together,” Armstrong said March 3 at a hearing before the House Natural Resources subcommittee on national parks, forests and public lands.

Interior would receive $40 million in the Obama administration’s 2010 budget to assess the impact of climate change on the nation’s lands, fish and wildlife. Armstrong said the funding request is an important endorsement of the need for scientific analysis to understand and address climate change.

…One of the main challenges is public opposition to such efforts, Kimbell said. Another hurdle is the cost. Making more cut wood available to local communities as biomass to be used as an alternate energy source is integral to driving down that cost and getting more public support, she said.

In California, where 300,000 acres of federal forests have been lost to wildfires this decade, state and federal officials have worked for three years to account for the carbon stored in state and federal forest lands, develop a strategy for reducing greenhouse gas emissions from forests and develop markets for using wood removed from forests as biomass.

But Anthony Brunello, deputy secretary for climate change and energy at the California Natural Resources Agency, said the effort needs to be expanded nationally and funded adequately to drive lasting impact. Input from transportation and public health officials and others also is needed, Brunello said. “We have learned that you have to step outside land management agencies,” he said. “It’s not going to work if it’s just science.”…