Study: Old growth forests do soak up CO2

Researchers say findings mean trees should get greenhouse credit

GRANTS PASS, Ore. – A group of forest scientists from the United States and Europe reports that a growing body of evidence settles an old question over whether old growth forests store more carbon dioxide from the atmosphere than they release.

Based on a review of research from more than 500 forest sites around the world, the answer, published Thursday in an online edition of the journal Nature, is that most forests between 15 and 800 years old do, and the total amounts to about 1 billion metric tons a year, or about 10 percent of the net carbon uptake worldwide.

Co-author Beverly Law, a professor of global change forest science at Oregon State University, said the findings argue for including credit for preserving old growth forests in the Kyoto Protocol and cap-and-trade schemes for controlling greenhouse gas emissions blamed for global warming.

“If you have an old forest on the ground, it’s probably better to leave it there than to cut it,” she said. “For the countries that did sign on to Kyoto, it is suggesting that perhaps they need to consider unmanaged primary forests in their carbon accounting.”

The United States did not sign the Kyoto agreement.

MSNBC