Also View
– In the News: Climate and Biodiversity (this website)
– Climate Change
for related pages on nsforestmatters.ca
Nova Scotia
– Provincial and Territorial Energy Profiles – Nova Scotia
Canada Energy Regulator stats for NS
– Canada’s official greenhouse gas inventory – Main page
Canada Environment Subpages:
National inventory report : greenhouse gas sources and sinks in Canada; see Report for 2022 .
It cites NS net emissions in kt CO2-equivalents; Extract from the Report for NS:
Accounting for Nova Scotia GHG Emissions in 2002. Forest Land (-4200) and Settlements (-63) are the only negative entries in the table. The number for Forest Land indicates it is a very substantial contribution to reducing our net emissions. The carbon emissions from Harvested Wood Products (2800) provides some indication of the intensity of use of our Forest Land that results in carbon emissions. Click on image for larger version
Historical data for selected years. The Figures for “Forest Land” vary from -5700 to -3600 k C2 equivalents. COMMENT: the big drop 1990-2005 is likely associated with record high forest harvests.
– Nova Scotia Forest Carbon Calculator (NSFCC): Overview, Methodology, and Application
James W. N. Steenberg and Rob N. O’Keefe, NS Natural Resources and Renewables Forestry Tech Report 2024-001 March 2024
“Abstract: Forests and forestry can contribute to climate change mitigation through the removal of atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO2) by forest vegetation and long-term storage in forest ecosystems and harvested wood products. Woodland owners,
researchers and educators, Indigenous communities, industry, and the general publicalike require information and decisionsupport tools to assist in integrating carbon into their approaches to forest management/land stewardship. The purpose of this researchreport is to describe a forest carbon web application called the Nova Scotia Forest Carbon Calculator (NSFCC; https://ns-resource-analysis.shinyapps.io/nsfcc/) that was developed in response to these needs…”
Canada & beyond
Lost in the Woods
Webpage on Nature Canada Website.
Download the doc: Lost in the Woods: Canada’s Hidden Logging Emissions Are Equivalent to Those from Oil Sands Operations
or access it directly from the Natural Resources Defense Council website.
Authors: Jennifer Skene, Natural Resources Defense Council & Michael Polanyi, Nature Canada, Oct 2022. 12 pp.
Also view on Nature Canada website:
– The Technical Version: What are the net gas emissions from logging in Canada
by M Bramley & G. Saul (Nature Canada), Oct 2022. 18 pages– The preceding Missing the Forest Report (2021)
Tip of the Hat to Norris W for providing these links.
– High emissions or carbon neutral? Inclusion of “anthropogenic” forest sinks leads to underreporting of forestry emissions
Bysoputh et al., 2024 in Glob. Change , 04 January 2024 “Recent research has shown forest-related emissions reported in national greenhouse gas inventories are much lower than global estimates from models summarized in Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change reports. A substantial part of this discrepancy could be explained by conceptual differences in what is counted as part of the anthropogenic forest carbon sink and the way countries report on their forest harvesting sectors. With Canada as a case study, we used published National Inventory Report and Common Reporting Format tables to isolate emissions and removals directly associated with forestry from those associated with forests more broadly. Forestry-related factors that affect CO2 emissions and removals include tree harvesting, post-harvest forest regeneration and growth, and carbon storage in long-lived harvested wood products. We found that between 2005 and 2021, forestry in Canada represented a net source of carbon (annual mean = 90.8 Mt. CO2e), and that total area logged was a significant predictor of net forestry emissions. In contrast, Canada’s NIR reported a small net carbon sink during the same time period (annual mean = −4.7 Mt. CO2e). We show this discrepancy can be explained by Canada’s GHG reporting approach that claims GHG emissions from wildfires are natural, but GHG removals from forests at the age of commercial maturity, despite being primarily natural disturbance origin, are anthropogenic. This reporting approach may lead to climate mitigation policies that are ineffectual or detrimental to reducing net carbon in the global atmosphere.”
The carbon costs of global wood harvests
L Peng et al., in Nature July 5, 2023. “Abstract. After agriculture, wood harvest is the human activity that has most reduced the storage of carbon in vegetation and soils1,2. Although felled wood releases carbon to the atmosphere in various steps, the fact that growing trees absorb carbon has led to different carbon-accounting approaches for wood use, producing widely varying estimates of carbon costs. Many approaches give the impression of low, zero or even negative greenhouse gas emissions from wood harvests because, in different ways, they offset carbon losses from new harvests with carbon sequestration from growth of broad forest areas3,4. Attributing this sequestration to new harvests is inappropriate because this other forest growth would occur regardless of new harvests and typically results from agricultural abandonment, recovery from previous harvests and climate change itself. Nevertheless some papers count gross emissions annually, which assigns no value to the capacity of newly harvested forests to regrow and approach the carbon stocks of unharvested forests. Here we present results of a new model that uses time discounting to estimate the present and future carbon costs of global wood harvests under different scenarios. We find that forest harvests between 2010 and 2050 will probably have annualized carbon costs of 3.5–4.2 Gt CO2e yr−1, which approach common estimates of annual emissions from land-use change due to agricultural expansion. Our study suggests an underappreciated option to address climate change by reducing these costs.”
More links at
– Accounting Standards & Data
Page on nsforestnotes.ca website, covering period 21 June 2016 to 21 June 2022.
– Forest Carbon
Page on website www.versicolor.ca/nstriad, covering period to 22 June 2022 to June 4, 2024.