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Canada's Boreal: Land Use Impacts to 2007
Peter Lee, Global Forest Watch Canada
Since 1999, Global Forest Watch Canada (GFWC) has been actively compiling and analyzing existing data sets on Canada's boreal forest, and creating new ones using satellite imagery, to monitor the status of Canada's forests and the changes occurring within them as a result of human activities. I present a summary of the work of GFWC and the implications of its results for Canada's boreal forest. It highlights where there is existing potential for proactive management to help protect the integrity of Canada's forest systems. Given climate change scenarios, our work also highlights the need for forest policy and management that span provincial and territorial borders, focusing on the status of ecosystems rather than politically-delineated jurisdictions.
Ecosystem boundaries and ecosystem integrity in the face of climate change must be given more priority if Canada's forests are to be sustainably managed. Such an approach requires collaboration amongst different provincial agencies, as well as the active participation of non-governmental organizations, scientists and industry.
Deforestation and Degradation of Tropical Forests in the Amazon
Dr. Mark A. Cochrane, South Dakota State University
For several years now, people across the world have been exposed to images of deforestation in tropical forests. The scenes of slash-and-burn agriculture and pasture creation have made these land uses synonymous with fire in the tropics for many people. Lost in the smoke and haze of these annual burnings has been the growing effect that escaped fires are having on standing forests, that were not intended to be sacrificed. In recent years, the growth of selective logging for the tropical timber trade has exacerbated the problem by turning large tracts of densely vegetated, humid, fire-resistant forest into highly combustible, fuel-laden tinderboxes.
Deforestation is only the most severe land cover change in the Amazon, forest degradation from fire and logging are also changing these forests and should be accounted for in assessments of the integrity of these ecosystems. Only through adequate management and protection will these forests be maintained and this is only possible if adequate policies and monitoring capacity are developed.
Carbon Market Incentives for Forest Management: Implications for the Boreal Forest Landscape
Geoff McCarney, University of Alberta
In recent years, forest management practices in Canada have been modified to include a broader set of objectives related to the overall ecological integrity of the forested landscape. Encompassed under the heading of sustainable forest management (SFM), this broadened approach considers values such as biodiversity, wildlife habitat and recreational opportunities alongside the traditional management principle of sustained timber yield. However, increased awareness of the effects of greenhouse gas emissions and climate change has also focused attention on the role of forests in the global carbon cycle.
Modifying forest management decisions to focus on increasing volumes of sequestered carbon may have implications for other SFM objectives. This talk presents the results of recent research into the sensitivity of forest management decisions to the introduction of a carbon market in Canada. The potential for carbon market incentives to alter the boreal forest landscape through changing management decisions will be highlighted.
The Role of Carbon Offsets
Dr. Ron Dembo, Zerofootprint
In order to preserve ancient forests from logging we require two major ingredients - job creation and a value that we can attach to the avoided logging. Fortunately, we are now seeing a tremendous and unprecedented awareness that we have to reduce our carbon emissions. Many governments are now preparing carbon trading schemes that could become a useful mechanism for creating the value we require to pay for avoided logging. Paradoxically, many environmental organizations are opposed to offsetting carbon with trees, thereby destroying the very thing that we all wish to preserve.
We discuss the notion of offsetting carbon with trees from many angles and conclude that this should be widely encouraged. The purpose of this talk is to help change the traditionally held beliefs regarding offsetting and trees.
Innu Nation: Planning for Conservation-based Economy
Valérie Courtois, Innu Nation Environmental Office & Larry Innes, Canadian Boreal Initiative
Nitassinan, the Innu Homeland, is part of the Eastern Boreal Forest, and is one of the largest, mostly intact boreal ecosystems in Canada. The foundations of Innu culture and identity are inherently tied to this land. Since as Innu say "everything depends on everything", planning activities or interactions with the land must occur with the protection of the natural composition, structure and function of Nitassinan's ecosystems as highest priority. This in turn serves to protect Innu culture while allowing for the building of sustainable economies. This vision for an appropriate balance between the ecological, cultural and economic dimensions of the land is the foundation of a new approach to sustainable forest management in the boreal forest.
In 2001, the Innu Nation and the Department of Forestry and Agrifoods signed the Forest Process Agreement. The agreement provided for joint ecosystem-based forest management planning in District 19, an area of 7.1 million ha in size, which is totally encompassed by the Innu Nation land claim. Highlights of this plan includes: a Protected Areas design at three scales (landscape, watershed and stand) for both ecological and cultural values, heavy emphasis on planning for local processing and an extensive research and monitoring plan. A Carbon budget was also prepared for the District, which compared traditional industrial forestry with the ecosystem-based approach.
The Innu, like many indigenous people around the world, are attempting to strike a balance between their traditional way of life and a modern economy. While District 19 contains most of Labrador's closed canopy (commercial) forests, current commercial opportunities that follow the traditional forestry or industrial model are limited. Reasons for this include: ecological conditions, distance to market, very little infrastructure, and operating conditions. The Innu are looking to identify alternatives based on conservation, including Carbon, to advance their goals as a Nation - to be ecologically, culturally and economically sustainable.
Unparalleled Conservation Opportunity: The role of indigenous lands in large scale conservation of Amazonian forests
Dr. Barb Zimmerman, Conservation International
Ongoing alliances between indigenous peoples and conservation organizations in the Brazilian Amazon have helped achieve the official recognition of ~1 million km2 of indigenous lands. Whereas state and federal protected areas comprise about 14% of the Amazon, indigenous lands encompass approximately 20% and a much broader range of ecosystem types than all other protected areas combined. The future of Amazonian indigenous reserves is of strategic importance for the fate of biodiversity in the region. Indigenous lands and other protected areas act as the principal barrier to forest cutting and fires along the "arc of deforestation" - the front line of forest destruction moving north from the south and southeast of the Amazon - where ~ 80% of deforestation is concentrated. The 110,000 km2 Kayapó indigenous territories of Pará and Matto Grosso and the 28,000 km2 Xingu Indigenous Park provide a striking example of this barrier effect and show that the presence of Amerindian peoples has halted an intense wave of deforestation for nearly two decades.
Long-term conservation is not guaranteed by either recognizing Amerindian lands or creating protected areas. Projected new infrastructure investments and agricultural expansion in the Amazon are likely to increase deforestation and pressure on indigenous lands and protected areas alike. These intensifying threats will require new strategies and new investments to both types of areas if their ecological integrity is to be guaranteed. Like many Amazonian indigenous peoples, the Kayapo were able to halt the expansion of the agricultural frontier on their lands but then allowed selective logging and gold mining in exchange for cash. Prospects for long-term conservation and sustainability in these lands depend on indigenous peoples' understandings of their resource base and on available economic alternatives. Although forest conservation is not guaranteed by either tenure security or indigenous knowledge, indigenous societies' relatively egalitarian common-property resource management regimes - along with adequate incentives and long-term partnerships with conservation organizations-can achieve this result.
Convergence of various estimates of Canada's forest sinks and remaining challenges
Dr. Jing Chen, Department of Geography, University of Toronto
Canada's forests cover about 420 Mha of the land area. It has been a challenge to estimate the carbon balance for such a large area. The Canadian Forest Service-Carbon Budget Model (CFS-CBM) has been the major model used for estimating Canada's forest carbon budget for various policy purposes. It uses century-averaged age-biomass curves and produces carbon budgets for 2.5 million stands based on forest inventory data. CFS-CBM reliably captures the effects of forest age structural changes on carbon cycle. The Integrated Terrestrial Ecosystem Carbon (InTEC) model, initially developed at the Canada Centre for Remote Sensing and later at the University of Toronto, produces Canada's forest carbon budget estimation at 1 km resolution (~5 million pixels) through combining remote sensing data with gridded forest inventory data. These two models initially provided quite different estimates, with a discrepancy of about 150 MtC/y for all Canada's forests. However, through improvements of both models, the difference has been reduced to about 40 MtC/y for managed forests (236 Mha). Growth enhancements due to climate change, nitrogen deposition and CO2 fertilization, which are considered in InTEC but not in CFS-CBM, could possibly explain this remaining difference. The Fluxnet Canada Research Network has contributed valuable data for InTEC validation, and this work will continue under the newly established Canadian Carbon Program.
Recent nested global inverse modeling using atmospheric CO2 data in combination with a global transport model also produced carbon balance estimates for 30 regions in North America and 20 regions for the rest of the globe. The inverse modeling results indicate that the Canada's terrestrial ecosystems were a carbon sink of 150-400 MtC/y from 1994-to 2003, which is much larger than forest carbon sink estimates by CFS-CBM and InTEC. Cropland and grassland are expected to have contributed to the sink with small magnitudes. Underestimation of sinks in old forests in both InTEC and CFS-CBM and underestimation of growth enhancements in InTEC could be part of the reasons for the large discrepancy.
The emerging science of forests for climate mitigation: greenhouse gas fluxes of old forests and cross-biome comparisons
Dr. Sean Thomas, Faculty of Forestry, University of Toronto
Forests play a central role in the carbon cycle and in potentially mitigating climate effects of greenhouse gas emissions. At a global scale, deforestation, primarily in the tropics, has accounted for ~25% of total global carbon emissions. While not a solution for the global carbon imbalance, forest conservation can at least address this part of the problem. Forests vary widely in terms of their total storage and uptake of carbon, and in their direct effects on local and regional climate; this variation is a very active field of research with some important unknowns. It has commonly been assumed that old-growth forests not subject to recent disturbance are generally in carbon balance. Recent research suggests that this is not the case: most old-growth forests are slight to moderate carbon sinks, with the strongest sinks being found in tropical systems. This finding substantially augments the argument for forest conservation as an effective means of mitigating carbon emissions. Recent research has also addressed the role of forests in determining regional and global climate through mechanisms other than carbon flux, such as radiation balance (albedo), and surface roughness characteristics. Results of "biome substitution" modeling experiments suggest that in boreal forests albedo effects may outweigh any positive effects of carbon uptake; in contrast, cloud generation by tropical forests provides a doubled climate impact of their replacement by grassland biomes. While generating much press attention, the science presented by these modeling experiments is at a very preliminary stage: substituting, for example, a grassland ecosystem for a forest ecosystem poorly represents dynamic changes in forest carbon pools and potential losses of soil carbon that would occur in actual deforestation, and completely neglects the process of forest re-growth. Nevertheless, the comparative analyses indicate scientific consensus on a few critical points: (1) conservation of boreal forests is critical in terms of mitigating the risk of losses of organic carbon in peat soils, (2) tropical forest conservation is central to combating deforestation effects that result in both carbon emissions and warming of regional and global climate through non-carbon mechanisms; (3) temperate forests are an "intermediate" but highly variable case; (4) forests in general are highly diverse in their potential for carbon uptake and climate interactions, and this diversity needs to be taken into account in establishing priorities for forest conservation as a means for mitigating global warming.
Tropical Deforestation and the Kyoto Protocol
Dr. Stephen Schwartzman, Environmental Defense
Tropical deforestation contributes ~20% of global annual greenhouse gas emissions, roughly as much as the fossil fuel emissions of the United States, the world's largest single emitter, but the current international emissions control regime (United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change – UNFCCC - and Kyoto Protocol) provides no incentives for tropical countries to reduce deforestation. In 2003, a group of Brazilian and international scientists presented a proposal to allow tropical countries that reduce deforestation against a national, historic baseline to receive compensation through international carbon markets, or "compensated reductions" at the UNFCCC Conference of the Parties in Milan. Subsequently, a group of tropical countries used the proposal to place the deforestation issue on the official UNFCCC agenda, and Brazil, the world’s largest tropical forest nation, has formally presented a very similar proposal.