On 2/19/20 2:02 PM, Mark Abramowitz via EV wrote:
Forests are important carbon sinks.
I accept that my understanding of the carbon cycle may be imperfect. If so, I'm sure I will be corrected.
Trees are grown as a long term crop as I've read that the trees in question were being grown. Just like annual crops of grain, vegetables, cotton, etc. Growing, harvesting, planting occurs every year. Tree fruit crops have a longer time frame. Most prunus, for instance, have short lives of 10-20 years. Some nut crops, such as pecans may go 50-100 years. Then they die or lose productivity and are removed to allow the crop land to be reused. The "removal" is typically bulldozing and burning. Here in the South, the predominate lumber crop is pine. Pines may be harvested in as little as 30 years, perhaps as long as 50. Then they are harvested and may be replanted. Highly likely, the land gets "developed" into suburbia. Remote land may be repeated replanted to timber over 100 years or longer. The production of timber removes the carbon from the cycle only for a relatively short time. Worst case is pulp wood which is likely converted back to CO2 months or a few years after harvesting. Construction lumber may be removed for 50-200 years. In essentially all cases the return to CO2 is from either burning or rotting or combination. The only way I know that significant quantities of wood can be removed long term is by burial. That requires glaciation or flooding with sedimentation over vast areas.
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