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The key to using trees to fight global warming is to expand forests in the southern hemisphere, according to a new U.S. study. Credit: Wikimedia SAN FRANSISCO: The key to using trees to offset global warming is to expand tropical rainforests south of the equator, according to research announced in the U.S. on Monday. Planting forests north of the equator appeared to either "zero-out" or be counterproductive in regard to global warming, according to the researchers. "Our study shows that tropical forests are very beneficial to the climate because they take up carbon and increase cloudiness, which in turn helps cool the planet," said Govindasamy Bala of Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California, lead author of the research. Bala cautioned that not all forests appear to have these effects. Forests have been touted by environmentalists for their abilities to absorb carbon dioxide (CO2), a notorious greenhouse gas, and for exuding moisture that increases sun-blocking cloud cover. But researchers involved in the study said the tendency for dark forest cover to absorb sunlight, thus warming the Earth, has been overlooked. "The darkening of the surface by new forest canopies in the high-latitude Boreal regions allows absorption of more sunlight that helps to warm the surface," Bala said. The study concluded that, by the year 2100, forests in mid- and high-latitudes will make some places up to 5 degrees celsius warmer than they would have been if the forests did not exist. Planting forests in mid-latitude areas has been heavily promoted in the name of mitigating climate change caused by global warming, according to researchers. The warmth from sunlight absorbed by forest canopies cancels out the positive effects from the trees taking in carbon, the study concluded. "Our study shows that preserving and restoring forests is likely to be climatically ineffective as an approach to slow global warming," said co-author Ken Caldeira of the Carnegie Institution. "To prevent climate change, we need to transform our energy system. It is only by transforming our energy system and preserving natural habitat, such as forests, that we can maintain a healthy environment. We must focus on effective strategies and not just 'feel-good' strategies." The research, conducted by scientists from the French Université Montpellier II, the Carnegie Institution and Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in the U.S., was one of the most comprehensive to date, and examined the climate and carbon-cycle effects of deforestation in an interactive, three-dimensional model. It will be presented on December 15 at an American Geophysical Society annual meeting in San Francisco. Readers' comments
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This is a highly complicated issue and cannot be resolved by a simple treatise of ideas of simplistic models of absorption and release of heat whether a living organism is a dark colour or light colour. Ecological energetics is vastly more complex than this and requires much more detailed and lengthy research than it is currently been given.
Similar arguments were put for planting permantent forests in areas of tundra, where trees an ecological association would not naturally occur as a biodiverse biome. The Snow Forests of the Canadian Shield and the whole of Siberia were given similar critera-parameters and yet for six months of the year their primary organs are snow frozen in a white cover (Even the deciduous forests of n/e Siberia are Snow covered!)
Understanding the photosynthetic formulae and then relating this to a spatial research on each area of forest biome will provide a more realistic conclusion to this fundamental question, and is based more on the biochemistry of carbon recycling within autotrophs than other ecological processes which follow this primary funciton withing the earth's biosphere.