November 30, 2009
A new direction for the US Forest Service In a memo (pdf) sent on November 20, US Forest Service Chief Tom Tidwell told his regional offices and station directors that "responding to the challenges of climate change in providing water and water-related ecosystem services is one of the most urgent tasks facing us as an agency. History will judge us by how well we respond to these challenges." Referring to how the challenge will alter future forestry management, Tidwell said that "Climate change is dramatically reshaping how we will deliver on our mission of sustaining the health, diversity, and productivity of the Nation's forests and grasslands for present and future generations." Tidwell's memo follows up on the strategic framework for responding to climate change released last month, and seeks to integrate that framework into the agency's day-to-day operations. Tidwell has proposed dividing the country into five planning regions, asking his managers and area directors to work together to create "aggressive and well-coordinated" area-specific action plans for landscape conservation. Much of the planning work is already underway, but Tidwell is urging his agency to expand their work into "full blown regions, stations and area action plans" addressing water as "fundamental outcome set." "The plans should seize opportunities to integrate activities and be innovative," Tidwell wrote in his email. "They should become blueprints for integrating climate change and watershed management. They should use climate change as a theme under which to integrate and streamline existing national and regional strategies for ecological restoration, fire and fuels, forest health, biomass utilization, and others." Tidwell also intends on naming a "climate change executive" to oversee implementation of the strategic framework through the action plans. Forests and national climate policy Testifying before a Senate subcommittee earlier this month, Tidwell emphasized the growing need for climate change as a fundamental consideration for sound forestry management.
Some private forests are now marketed as "carbon sinks" that will play a vital role in whatever cap-and-trade legislation might eventually become law. Research suggests that American forests store 15 percent or more of the country's CO2 emissions, and can be cultivated to store even more. By growing larger, more resilient trees, some say, forests might be able to sequester 50 percent more carbon and become an important "bridge" to when the country has theoretically moved away from a fossil fuel-based energy economy. But controversy over proper forest management persists, with government agencies and scientists still grappling with understanding and measuring how forests store and release carbon. Some newer "environmentally friendly" methods of removing cleared brush and small trees for biofuel may release more carbon when used as transportation fuel than if the material were simply burned in the woods. But others counter that thinning and fire prevention practices now underway will have long-term benefits, even if carbon is released in the short-term.
But Beverly Law, a professor of global change forest science at Oregon State University, cautioned forest managers not to presume that fire prevention measures will always necessarily enhance a forest's ability to act as a carbon sink.
Many, including professor Law, say that forest management policy needs to be tailored to each individual forest, weighing the risk of carbon release in wildfires to the "carbon cost" of fire prevention. Which gets us back, in a way, to Tidwell's memo calling for area specific action plans for federal forest management, an idea that has been generally accepted as a step in the right direction.
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