deforestation does not release CO2 ?

[Widdekind]

Every year that trees (or plants) grow, they suck CO2 out of the air, and "sequester" the carbon into their biomass, releasing the O2 (Oxygen). So, if you cut down a tree, the tree (no longer alive) stops sequestering carbon. But, no carbon is released, either. What releases carbon, during "deforestation", is not the "logging" part, but the "burning" part -- burning material uses up O2, converting all the carbon back to CO2.

For example, with Palm Oil plantations in Indonesia & Malaysia, giant evergreen hardwoods can grow to heights of hundreds of feet. If such trees take (say) 100 years to grow that tall, then their trunks store 100 years of carbon (-1 unit of carbon sucked from the sky each year). If you kill the tree, it stops consuming carbon (-0 units this year, or next). If you burn the tree, you pump a century's worth of CO2 back into the atmosphere (+100 units). Thus, the "global warming" part of "deforestation" is principally the "slash-and-burn" part of the equation -- simply harvesting the timber wouldn't cost you an equivalent amount of net carbon (100 units) for a hundred years (!).

Naively, any means of clearing land, without burning everything in sight, whilst not "helping" to scrub our skies, would not harm them either. If all plant biomass is composed primarily of cellulose, then there "ought" to be some way, of converting general plant matter into low-grade paper. Or, perhaps all the trees could be logged, and the undergrowth chipped & mulched, instead of burned ??

 

[Widdekind]

could they push the brush into big piles of "yard waste", and compost them, selling off compost & wood-chips, like local garbage dumps ?? Why burn anything, if you could convert the biomass into valuable products ?? wouldn't palm plantations want fertilizer (compost) or weed-snuffing mulch ??

 

[waltky]

Usin' AI to save forests...

Researchers: Artificial Intelligence Can Help Fight Deforestation in Congo
July 28, 2017 — A new technique using artificial intelligence to predict where deforestation is most likely to occur could help the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) preserve its shrinking rainforest and cut carbon emissions, researchers have said.

Congo's rainforest, the world's second-largest after the Amazon, is under pressure from farms, mines, logging and infrastructure development, scientists say. Protecting forests is widely seen as one of the cheapest and most effective ways to reduce the emissions driving global warming. But conservation efforts in DRC have suffered from a lack of precise data on which areas of the country's vast territory are most at risk of losing their pristine vegetation, said Thomas Maschler, a researcher at the World Resources Institute (WRI). "We don't have fine-grain information on what is actually happening on the ground," he told the Thomson Reuters Foundation.

To address the problem Maschler and other scientists at the Washington-based WRI used a computer algorithm based on machine learning, a type of artificial intelligence. The computer was fed inputs, including satellite derived data, detailing how the landscape in a number of regions, accounting for almost a fifth of the country, had changed between 2000 and 2014. The program was asked to use the information to analyze links between deforestation and the factors driving it, such as proximity to roads or settlements, and to produce a detailed map forecasting future losses.

Logs lie next to a rusting barge on the banks of the Congo river, DRC.​

Overall the application predicted that woods covering an area roughly the size of Luxembourg would be cut down by 2025 — releasing 205 million metric tons of carbon dioxide (CO2) into the atmosphere. The study improved on earlier predictions that could only forecast average deforestation levels in DRC over large swathes of land, said Maschler. "Now, we can say: 'actually the corridor along the road between these two villages is at risk'," Maschler said by phone late on Thursday.

The analysis will allow conservation groups to better decide where to focus their efforts and help the government shape its land use and climate change policy, said scientist Elizabeth Goldman who co-authored the research. The DRC has pledged to restore 3 million hectares (11,583 square miles) of forest to reduce carbon emissions under the 2015 Paris Agreement, she said. But Goldman said the benefits of doing that would be outweighed by more than six times by simply cutting predicted forest losses by 10 percent.

Researchers: Artificial Intelligence Can Help Fight Deforestation in Congo