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I'd imagine that on a yearly basis, plantation forests sequester more carbon than old growth forest. Modern pine trees (especially pinus radiata in NZ) are incr

I'd imagine that on a yearly basis, plantation forests sequester more carbon than old growth forest. Modern pine trees (especially pinus radiata in NZ) are incredibly fast growing. Time from planting to harvest is 25-30 years for pinus radiata. The old trees that they were cutting down would've been hundreds of years old. The growth rate of trees slows down over time.

deleted 8y ago
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ItsMe000001 8y ago
Maybe the sarcasm tag is missing? What's the point of looking at "rate of growth"? Look at how much wood there is in total at any given point! Trees that are removed are not exported to somewhere outside earth, so that growing them faster would remove more carbon.
- richardw 8y ago
  As long as the wood isn't burned it's still removing carbon from the atmosphere, which is our primary goal. When the carbon was in the ground it was still fine, we don't need it off-planet. Metaphor: water as carbon. Thick pipe with faster flow can move as much water as a slower moving fat pipe. You're focusing on the cross section of the pipe.
  - Scarblac 8y ago
    Much of the wood is burned. In the Netherlands (and in the wider EU? Not sure if this is a national or EU thing) power plants have to burn some percentage of biomass instead of fossil fuel to meet "sustainability" targets, and they burn wood pellets imported from the US to do that.
szemet 8y ago
> The growth rate of trees slows down over time. No, it is accelerating - according to this study in Nature [2]. "reviewed records from forest studies on six continents, involving 673,046 individual trees and more than 400 species...97% of the species surveyed, the mass growth rate—literally, the amount of tree in the tree—kept increasing even as the individual tree got older and taller" [1] "for most species mass growth rate increases continuously with tree size. Thus, large, old trees do not act simply as senescent carbon reservoirs but actively fix large amounts of carbon compared to smaller trees; at the extreme, a single big tree can add the same amount of carbon to the forest within a year as is contained in an entire mid-sized tree" [2] [1] http://science.time.com/2014/01/15/study-shows-older-trees-absorb-more-carbon/ http://science.time.com/2014/01/15/study-shows-older-trees-a... [2] https://www.nature.com/articles/nature12914 https://www.nature.com/articles/nature12914

deleted 8y ago

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ItsMe000001 8y ago

Maybe the sarcasm tag is missing? What's the point of looking at "rate of growth"? Look at how much wood there is in total at any given point! Trees that are removed are not exported to somewhere outside earth, so that growing them faster would remove more carbon.

richardw 8y ago
As long as the wood isn't burned it's still removing carbon from the atmosphere, which is our primary goal. When the carbon was in the ground it was still fine, we don't need it off-planet. Metaphor: water as carbon. Thick pipe with faster flow can move as much water as a slower moving fat pipe. You're focusing on the cross section of the pipe.
- Scarblac 8y ago
  Much of the wood is burned. In the Netherlands (and in the wider EU? Not sure if this is a national or EU thing) power plants have to burn some percentage of biomass instead of fossil fuel to meet "sustainability" targets, and they burn wood pellets imported from the US to do that.

szemet 8y ago

> The growth rate of trees slows down over time. No, it is accelerating - according to this study in Nature [2]. "reviewed records from forest studies on six continents, involving 673,046 individual trees and more than 400 species...97% of the species surveyed, the mass growth rate—literally, the amount of tree in the tree—kept increasing even as the individual tree got older and taller" [1] "for most species mass growth rate increases continuously with tree size. Thus, large, old trees do not act simply as senescent carbon reservoirs but actively fix large amounts of carbon compared to smaller trees; at the extreme, a single big tree can add the same amount of carbon to the forest within a year as is contained in an entire mid-sized tree" [2] [1] http://science.time.com/2014/01/15/study-shows-older-trees-absorb-more-carbon/ http://science.time.com/2014/01/15/study-shows-older-trees-a... [2] https://www.nature.com/articles/nature12914 https://www.nature.com/articles/nature12914