🚀 go-pugleaf

taganov@unixg.ubc.ca (Robert Froese) writes:

>As to the carbon accumulation, studies have shown that intensive cropping
>of coastal BC forests would actually remove more CO2 than the logging
>produced due to disturbance.

By `remove', I gather you mean remove from the atmosphere. For over a
decade we've seen debate rage back and forth over the effects of forestry
on CO2 sources and sinks. It's been a very difficult question to resolve.
MB annual reports of the mid-80's proudly asserted that their logging was
helping to take CO2 out of the atmosphere. However, scientific opinion was
never so sure about that; the company's more recent publications admitted
that the effects were not well understood. Anyway, I've followed the debate
with interest, and would appreciate knowing what studies you're referring
to. Can you supply me some pointers?

>Um, there is a whole bunch of Costal Western Hemlock Biogeoclimatic Zone
>in intact Old Growth state and a bunch of that is preserved, including two
>large scale watersheds in clayoquot, for example.

Those `bunches' are rather tiny. From the Clayoquot Sound land use decision
background report:

  The newly protected areas in Clayoquot Sound increase the percentage of
  CWHvm1 protected on Vancouver Island from 3.4 percent to 5.7 percent,
  and CWHvm2 from 5.6 percent to 7.7 percent.

Note that those are percentages of the biogeoclimatic variants, not of
Vancouver Island. Eight percent being a fairly small number, I would say
that there is very little CWH protected on Vancouver Island. I wonder
whether CORE/cabinet will be able to scrape together 12% of CWH for the
protected areas strategy, or whether it's already too late for that.

>Well, only 50% of the province has operable forest on it, for instance. 
>Given that 80% of that remains in age classes over 150 years...

Of 45.6 million hectares of `productive forest land', 26.6 million hectares
are listed (by the BC MoF, 91-2 annual report) as `mature timber', which
they define as exceeding 80 or 120 years depending on the species; the rest
is immature or not stocked. Given those numbers, your 80%-over-150-years
claim appears improbable; it would have been true perhaps twenty years ago,
though.

   ...Art Pope, Univ. of British Columbia