Trees enlisted in carbon control

Bobby Magill in the Coloradan: Researchers at the U.S. Forest Service's Rocky Mountain Research Station in Fort Collins are taking a look at how managing forests to promote carbon sequestration might help put a damper on climate change.

All those trees in the mountains absorb carbon in the air originating from vehicle tail pipes, which means the more trees there are in the woods, the more vehicle carbon emissions are trapped in the forest without contributing to climate change, said Tom Crow, manager of the Forest and Woodlands Ecosystem Program at the Rocky Mountain Research Station.

At the end of December, the research station released more than 300 pages of scientific analysis and research on carbon sequestration and the policy implications of managing federal forest land for combating climate change. Even as about 2,500 acres of forested land are lost each day in the United States, forests currently sequester between 14 percent and 19 percent of fossil fuel emissions, Crow said Thursday. But that number could diminish as more forests disappear.

"The No. 1 thing is to keep forest land and forest cover, that is absolutely essential," he said. "That's something that, quite frankly, we're not doing a very good job of doing." One of the challenges foresters are facing is putting a value on forests' ability to sequester carbon, he said.

…Managing forests to combat climate change has a tremendous impact on public policy because it forces lawmakers to ask themselves whether they want to convert agricultural land back into forests or change how stands of trees are managed in order to maximize the amount of carbon they store, he said…

Uncompahgre Gorge in Colorado, from the Colorado Department of Transportation