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There is no fundamental problem with a forest burning. It might release all it's carbon into the atmosphere while burning, but when it regrows it will re-absorb
by phire 5y ago
There is no fundamental problem with a forest burning. It might release all it's carbon into the atmosphere while burning, but when it regrows it will re-absorb all that carbon.
Bit of an accounting nightmare. You have to make sure it is allowed to regrow. You can't count that regrowth as new carbon sequestration, it's sequestrating it's original carbon again. And it's also going to take decades before it fully regrows.
- joe_the_user 5y agoMy point above is that because of fire suppression, California's forests have grown denser than the long-term, sustainable average. California's forests were much less dense in the 1880s because fires were quite common - it is a "fire shaped landscape", the ecology evolved with fire. If someone is attempting to make things even more dense, they simply will stoke fuel for more fire.
- phire 5y agoYeah. The accounting can become even more of an absolute nightmare if you actually have to start planning that far ahead and taking into account the long-term sustainable average of converting land to forest, instead of the short-term best case.