South-east Australia’s natural forests are among the most carbon dense in the world
These forest store three times more carbon than Australian and international climate change experts realise, according to a new report by The Australian National University.
The largest stocks of carbon are found in the tall wet eucalypt forests of Victoria and Tasmania. These forests support trees up to 80 metres tall and can contain more than 1200 tonnes of carbon per hectare, which is up to 10 times more carbon per hectare than previously realised.
Scientists from the Australian National University in Canberra have calculated that the average amount of carbon stored in unlogged natural eucalypt forests is about 640 tonnes per hectare. According to the leading Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the average carbon stock in temperate forests is only 217 tonnes of carbon per hectare.
The authors of the report, Green Carbon – Professor Brendan Mackey, Dr Heather Keith, Dr Sandra Berry and Professor David Lindenmayer – found that a new approach is needed to account for carbon stored in natural forests.
“Reducing emissions from deforestation and forest degradation in developing countries has been the focus for the international community since the United Nations climate change conference in Bali last December, but this is also an issue for Australia,” Professor Mackey said.
We have to seriously question why anyone in their right mind would clear fell and wood chip these wonderful forests and why we can’t make paper from bamboo instead of old growth forest!
In Australia about half the forests have been cleared in the last 220 years and the carbon stocks in more than 50 per cent of the remaining unprotected forests have been degraded by land use activities such as logging. Professor Mackey said the research should alert Australian governments and international agencies of the urgent need to protect the carbon stored in natural forests as part of the suite of measures needed to solve the climate change problem.
I went to Tasmania the fist time in 1957 and I took photos. When I went back more recently there were large areas that I was told had always been un-forested, but I remember as forest and have the photos of the forest. There are many other areas where there is a narrow strip of forest along the tourist roads and clear felled areas behind. Hopefully the cost of carbon will protect these wonderful resources.
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