A second scientific paper by MG Betts & colleagues further documents “Forest Degradation” in Maritime Canada 31Oct2024

It’s difficult to understate the significance of this paper given the recent efforts of the E.U. to bring in regulations that limit exports and imports of forest products associated with “deforestation” and “forest degradation” while the Canadian forest industry and the federal government contend that our forestry practices are fully sustainable and express concern that such regulations would create unfair trade barriers for Canadian wood exports. The results and conclusions from this recent “Carbon Paper” and an earlier “Bird Paper” by MG Betts & colleagues, both based on data for forests in Maritime Canada, lend a lot of credence to recent protests in Nova Scotia over forest degradation associated with harvesting of remaining patches of Old Forest in landscapes on Crown lands. Likewise, the 2024 “Carbon Paper” does not support the contention of Forest NS that growing secondary forests lock carbon away more effectively than unharvested forests in Protected Areas.

“New Brunswick forests are losing, not storing, carbon. But conservation could have benefits for the climate and biodiversity”

So reads a News Release citing a paper published on Oct 30, 2024 in Global Change Biology by M.G. Betts et al.

M.G. Betts et al., 2024. “Congruent Long-Term Declines in Carbon and Biodiversity Are a Signature of Forest Degradation”Global Change Biology Oct 30, 2024. https://doi.org/10.1111/gcb.17541

The Full Text (graphics inserted):

“Natural climate solutions (often tree planting) have been proposed to fix climate change. But how good are managed eastern Canadian forests for sequestering carbon? Over the past 35 years, the forests of New Brunswick, Canada have been losing rather than sequestering carbon, according to a scientific article published today in the peer-reviewed Global Change Biology. This is counter to common popular belief that managed forests are carbon sinks and that tree plantations are good for the climate. The study has implications for how eastern Canadian forests are tallied in Canada’s efforts to reduce climate impacts.

“The authors, led by Matt Betts of Oregon State University and Zhiqiang Yang of the US Forest Service, used satellite imagery and long-term tree sample plots to map above-ground carbon across NB forests over 35 years. Although the province has experienced a net gain in forest cover, the amount of carbon has declined by a massive 774.62 Tg (or Megatones). The authors then calculated how much of this reduction is still stored in wood products like building materials and in the landfill. Even after accounting for storage in these products, the provinces forests have emitted 141 CO2e Tg (4.02 Tg of CO2 per year). This amounts to 32% of all carbon emissions in NB – including from the energy sector, transportation, and manufacturing.

“Betts says the main driver of these carbon losses has to do with replacing old, naturally regenerated forests with young plantations and then regularly harvesting trees at a relatively young age (in NB, this is often as young as 50 years). Since old forests store more carbon than young ones, the net effect has been a reduction of carbon. Betts noted that planting trees in locations that were formerly abandoned fields can have net carbon benefits, but the common practice of clearcutting and planting is not advantageous. Carbon losses parallel declines in bird populations, the study found. The authors note that similar processes of carbon and biodiversity loss could be happening in managed forests worldwide. They argue that the methods they present can be used for tracking this potential “degradation.

“The study also concluded that locations across the province that still store the most forest carbon are also those that house the greatest old-forest biodiversity – in this case measured as bird habitat. The populations of old-forest bird species have been in decline since the 1985s a previous study published in Nature Ecology and Evolution found.

“This opens the opportunity for “win-win” solutions where biodiversity can be conserved as well as enhancing carbon storage”, Betts said. With an increasing prevalence of international agreements to incentivize carbon and biodiversity conservation, there could soon be direct incentive for landowners to protect old forest.”

“Contact: Dr. Matthew Betts, Oregon State University: matt.betts@oregonstate.edu”


Comment (David P)

It’s difficult to understate the significance of this paper given the recent efforts of the E.U. to bring in regulations that limit exports and imports forest products associated with both “deforestation” and “forest degradation” while  Canadian forest industry and government contend that our  forestry practices are fully sustainable and express concern that such regulations would create unfair trade barriers for Canadian wood exports.

Argue the Canadians, as cited on Argus Media on June 28, 2024:


Canadian natural resources regulators say they are concerned the EU deforestation regulation (EUDR) will create trade barriers for Canadian wood exports.

Natural Resources Canada (NRCAN) told Argus Canada shares EU’s desire to address deforestation globally and recognized the scope and scale of the EU’s goals toward deforestation-free supply chains. But parts of the EUDR’s definition of “forest degradation” are “not consistent with best practices for regeneration as applied in Canada, where planting of native species and natural regeneration are integral to sustainable forest management,” NRCAN said…

The typical practice in Canada for managed forests is to replant the same species which populated the forest before harvest. That constitutes forest degradation under current EUDR definitions, but it is considered a sustainable practice that protects biodiversity, an industry source with knowledge on the matter told Argus.

There is no internationally accepted definition of “forest degradation” by countries or by major international bodies such as the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO).

“Without an accepted definition or consistent reporting methodology, it is unclear how degradation will be verified in a measurable, consistent way by EU operators or their suppliers,” NRCAN said. The Canadian Council of Forest Ministers had recently agreed to a working definition of forest degradation to demonstrate the country’s commitment to sustainable forestry practices.

The Betts et al., 2024 “Carbon Paper” (my paraphrase of the title) together with the earlier “Bird Paper” (Betts et al., 2022) address the definition/measurement issue head on with some very rigorous science and use of data for the forests of N.B, the earlier paper based also on data for NS and PEI. Thus the results are directly applicable to the Maritimes.

Last Hope Encampment at Beals Meadow on Jan 3, 2022

The results and conclusions from both papers lend a lot of credence to recent forestry protests in Nova Scotia spearheaded variously by the ‘Annapolis Environment & Ecology’ group, Extinction Rebellion Mi’kma’ki-Nova Scotia, Save our Old Forests and others at the Corbett Lake Old Hardwood Forest (2018-2019), Beals Meadow  (2021-2022) and most recently at Goldsmith Lake (Mar 2 – Sep 28, 2024).

These protests have not been about clearcutting, as have been many such protests in the past . Rather they are  about forest degradation associated with harvesting remaining patches of Old Forest in landscapes on Crown lands where there has been pervasive clearcutting in the past, and renewed or ongoing harvests by both clearcutting (in HPF zones of the Triad) and partial cutting (in the Matrix zones of the Triad).

The forestry folks NSNRR insist that because the triad model of ecological forestry has now been implemented in Nova Scotia, “90 per cent of Crown land is managed with biodiversity as the top priority” (NS Gov. News Release, Jan 17, 2023). However, they are not providing the monitoring and transparency required to confirm that Crown land forests are not now being degraded and there is reason to be skeptical about some of what we are told, e.g. that under partial harvests “Two-thirds of the forest will be left standing” when in fact it can be up to 50% (view Post July 14, 2024).

Likewise, the 2024 “Carbon Paper” (Betts et al., 2024) challenges  the notion advanced by Forest NS that “protected areas cannot lock carbon away as effectively as growing forests” (view Forest NS Blog Post Understanding Climate-Smart Conservation: A Step Towards a Sustainable Future). View also Cox et al., 2023; Cameron and Bush, 2016*
*Cameron, R.P. and Bush, P., 2016. Are protected areas an effective way to help mitigate climate change?: A comparative carbon sequestration model for protected areas and forestry management in Nova Scotia, Canada. The International Journal of Interdisciplinary Environmental Studies, 11, pp.1-13.

Betts et al 2024 comment that their studies

…indicate an opportunity to incentivize carbon-biodiversity co-benefits for both small and large forest landowners in NB. International and national carbon markets could potentially be harnessed to offset the financial opportunity cost to landowners of reducing harvest rates in NB forests. International policies precluding forest degradation could also provide incentive for changes to forest practices to increase habitat and carbon.

The longer we wait to assess what’s really happening in our forests from biodiversity and carbon perspectives while exaggerating what’s truly available sustainably (Post, Oct 16, 2024) and encouraging massive industrial scale harvesting (Post, Sep 14, 2024), the sooner the possibilities to benefit from such incentives will be lost for another generation or two or even longer – not to mention the loss of large tracts of old forest and the many benefits those provide to all of us and to all species.

A Tip of the Hat to J.S. for forwarding the News Release.

Related

Deforestation and Forest Degradation defined
Big Forestry in Nova Scotia, the forestry folks in the Nova Scotia government and the federal forestry folks in Canada like to point out that there has been very little deforestation in NS and in Canada at large, that “Canada’s forest laws are among the strictest in the world”. This, the feds say, is evidence enough that “Canadian forests are healthy, productive and thriving.”Critics have maintained that while the forest cover may not have changed,  forest degradation has occurred though conversion of older forest to younger forest and though species simplification, e.g., see NRDC, 2017
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Deforestation” or forest clearance is the removal and destruction of a forest or stand of trees from land that is then converted to non-forest use, e.g. conversion to farms or urban use.(WP) “Afforestation” is the establishment of a forest or stand of trees (forestation) in an area where there was no previous tree cover.(WP) In NS, overall, we have had net afforestation since the early 1900s due to abandonment of agricultural lands and their natural reversion to forest, but net deforestation of about 15% of the land since pre-settler times. (See Land Base). “Forest Degradation “is variously defined.  The UN-REDD (United Nations Programme on Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation)  defines it as ‘ the human-induced loss of carbon stocks within forest land that remains forest land’* .Thomson et al., 2013 define it as “reduction in the capacity of a forest to produce ecosystem services; Betts et al., 2022 define is as “the reduction or or loss of biological complexity in forests”, e.g.by changing the age structure  through clearcutting or highgrading (selective removal of oldest trees), use of herbicides to increase softwoods. Betts et al., 2024 suggest that remote-sensing-derived models for forest carbon and biodiversity can be used to assess the landscape-level trajectory of forest degradation.

EU trade regulations put forest degradation in the crosshairs
By Natasha Bulowski for the National Observer, Sep 27, 2023.

North America faces new trade challenges and opportunities under EU Deforestation Regulation
In www.agroberichtenbuitenland.nl, Sep 19, 2024

Europe’s Global Green Ambitions Push Too Hard Once Again
John Ainger et al. for Bloomberg, Oct 3, 2024. ”EU deforestation law delayed by a year amid widespread protest”

Global Wood Summit kicks off with dire near-term forecast
Kelly McCloskey, Editor for Tree Frog Forest News, October 30, 2024. “…Taylor described the long list of current and expected “fibre supply disruptors (including the war in Ukraine and in the Middle East), and the many negative policy initiatives, (such as the EU Deforestation Regulation and new logging restrictions in BC and Oregon), that are exacerbating the availability and supply of low-cost softwood logs world wide.”

The Finnish Environment Institute Forest says carbon sinks have been overestimated, logging must be reduced
YLE News, Oct 18, 2024.

–   On Reversing Forest Degradation in Nova Scotia
Page on NS Forest Notes by David Patriquin, June 8, 2022.  View as PDF

Open letter to Nova Scotia Premier Houston requesting cessation of logging in areas that are prime candidates for protection
Post on this website, Oct 17, 2024, by SOOF

Nova Scotia Goverment responds to Questions about the Sustainable Forest Harvest Level
Post on this website, Oct 16, 2024

Shady Accounting and Vanishing Forests on Nova Scotia’s Crown Lands
Post on this website, July 14, 2024

Protected Areas in Nova Scotia help to mitigate climate change, clearcuts do not
Post on nsforestnotes.ca, May 26, 2017. “A paper by Robert Cameron of NSE and Peter Bush of NSDNR, published last year, suggests 112 million tonnes of carbon is sequestered (stored) in existing Protected Areas and in areas proposed for protection in 2012*; if protected, they would increase their carbon storage over the next 130 years.”

Carbon sequestration and storage implications of three forest management regimes in the Wabanaki-Acadian Forest: A review of the evidence
Emma Cox et al., 2023 in Environmental Reviews

Marcus Zwicker: Managed forests sequester more carbon than unmanaged forests
Post on nsforestnotes.ca,Feb 20, 2019


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‘Would be pleased to post perspectives of NS NRR and Forest NS on this topic should they wish to forward them.
– david p

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