By Jennifer Nitson
| Posted: Friday, July 6, 2007 12:00 am
Gazette-Times reporter
Researchers at Oregon State University have received a three-year, $1.5 million grant from the North American Carbon Program to study how climate and human activity affects the "carbon balance" in Oregon, Washington and California.
The carbon balance refers to the ratio of fossil fuel and other carbon emissions that are absorbed by natural processes, such as the photosynthesis of trees, and those that remain in the environment as pollution.
"Its like a bank balance, it's like the net amount that is saved or lost," said OSU forest science professor Mark Harmon. "The uptake side is caused by generally plants. … Carbon dioxide is one of the compounds they use to capture their energy. The loss processes are quite complicated and there are an awful lot of them."
Forests take carbon dioxide out of the air and store it as they grow. Oceans and other bodies of water absorb carbon dioxide.
Deforestation, wildfires and other natural and human-caused events release this carbon back into the environment.
Soil, weather and water all play roles in how much carbon is stored or released.
The OSU research will examine areas covered by forests, crops, shrubs, woods and grass; and
factors that affect carbon storage or release such as forest fires, logging and urbanization.
"We are trying to figure out what the land-based carbon sink is," said Beverly Law, a professor of forest science at OSU and a principal researcher on the project. "We're trying to understand how land-based ecosystems respond to climate from year to year and how they react to disturbances."
With field measurements, observations, remote-sensing data and computer modeling, researchers will map carbon sources and sinks and study various influences on the carbon cycle, such as drought.
"If you have several drought years, what happens to the carbon balance in the various ecosystems we have?" Law asked.
The work will also consider the effects of climate variation and the interaction between climate and disturbances across different environments.
"In the Pacific Northwest, we expect that the summers will become dryer and the winters will have more rain," said Law. "In this new study, we will examine different responses to climate, in areas that range from coastal forests to arid shrub-lands and woodlands in the Great Basin. We hope to learn how climate anomalies will affect net carbon uptake and water vapor exchange in the different regions."
Scientists expect to find large contrasts in the three-state region, significant differences in the ability of forests to offset fossil-fuel emissions, and changes caused by specific events.
Carbon storage by western Oregon forests, for instance, offsets about 50 percent of the state's fossil-fuel emissions in an average year, but this amount decreased to 30 percent in 2002, the year of the historic 499,965-acre Biscuit Fire in southern Oregon and northern California.
The North American Carbon Program, in conjunction with numerous federal agencies - including the United States Department of Agriculture and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency - seeks through this study and others to come up with a scientific basis on which to make policy decisions, Law said.
"It's intended to develop more certainty and improved estimates of the terrestrial carbon sinks and help develop decision tools for decision makers," she said.
The goal of the North American Carbon Program is to integrate, analyze and apply knowledge of carbon sinks and their numerous variables across the continent.
"It's a daunting task," Law said.
The OSU News Service contributed to this story.