Tag: forests

In case you didn’t know, Solar, Wind, Geothermal Projects, are being “Fast Track” by the Obama Administration.

Fast Tracking attempts to minimize the red tape, in order to get the boots on the ground as soon as feasible.

They are OUR Public lands by the way.  We should use them to secure our Energy Future while protecting our wonderful Natural Heritage.

Here are the highlights:

BLM> California> California Desert District> Alternative Energy> Fast-Track Projects

Fast-Track Renewable Energy Projects

Solar

Ivanpah BrightSource Solar Project

The 400-megwatt project would incorporate seven 459-foot tall power towers and 214,000 heliostats (each holding two flat mirrors).

The project’s power plants would share an administrative complex/construction logistics area on approximately 4,073 acres of public land.

Scientists at the Smithsonian Environmental Research Center have published a study, Evidence for a recent increase in forest growth, suggesting that climate change can quite literally be measured by treehuggers. Like the average American citizen, American trees look to have had increasingly bulging middles in recent decades.  Having spent their careers quite literally hugging trees, SERC scientists Geoffrey Parker and Sean McMahon have written a study documenting

evidence that forests in the Eastern United States are growing faster than they have in the past 225 years. The study offers a rare look at how an ecosystem is responding to climate change.

For over 20 years, Parker has gone into a set of forests in the mid-Atlantic, tape measure in hand, and giving them a hug to measure their size. Parker’s own hugging has been extended with a robust group of volunteers conducting regular measurements of specified trees. (The boy scout to the right, while in a SERC forest, isn’t engaged in actual measurements for the study.) Some 250,000 hugs later, he has quite a database in hand.

The results of analyzing hugs surprised these researchers. Based on the data from these 100,000s of hugs, Parker’s and McMahon’s analysis documents

that the forest is packing on weight at a much faster rate than expected. … on average, the forest is growing an additional 2 tons per acre annually. That is the equivalent of a tree with a diameter of 2 feet sprouting up over a year.

Now, there are many things that contribute to plant growth, from soil quality to rainfall to temperatures to CO2 concentrations. Parker and McMahon have concluded that the driver for the bulging middles of the studied groves is best explained through human impacts: the rising levels of CO2 (a nutrition); and the warmer temperatures and extended growing season due to global warming (driven, in no small part, due to the rising CO2 levels).

More unfortunate climate change news for us and the candidates – this time from the boreal forests. The Guardian and others are reporting on a new study that finds trees are absorbing less CO2 as the world warms.

The ability of forests to soak up man-made carbon dioxide is weakening, according to an analysis of two decades of data from more than 30 sites in the frozen north.

The finding published today is crucial, because it means that more of the CO2 we release will end up affecting the climate in the atmosphere rather than being safely locked away in trees or soil.

The results may partly explain recent studies suggesting that the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere is increasing faster than expected. If higher temperatures mean less carbon is soaked up by plants and microbes, global warming will accelerate.

Worldwide, only tropical rainforests are larger then boreal or northern forests. They cover Alaska, northern Canada, Scandinavia and Siberia.