13
votes
Accepted
Which consumes more carbon dioxide: a fully grown forest or a newly planted one that is growing?
A forest of old trees sequesters more carbon per year than a forest with the same quantity of young trees.
When I first saw this question I thought I knew the answer -- trees grow faster when they're ...
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12
votes
Accepted
What are eco-friendly substitutes of wood?
Wood is close to the most eco-friendly building material around:
It's renewable.
It's production overall pulls carbon out of the atmosphere.
Material tied up in construction is carbon that isn't in ...
- 7,127
10
votes
Accepted
Is burning wood the same as letting it biodegrade from a CO2 emissions perspective?
Conservation
It is a fundamental law of physics that matter/mass/energy (all being, ultimately, the same thing) cannot be created or destroyed — they just change form.
Under 'normal' conditions on ...
- 2,784
8
votes
Accepted
What is the climate impact of planting one tree?
This paper suggests that one 20 year old tree will sequester 1 tonne of Carbon which is 3.67 tonnes of CO2 which is roughly a year's CO2 footprint of one UK person or a third of a US person.
However, ...
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7
votes
Which consumes more carbon dioxide: a fully grown forest or a newly planted one that is growing?
As LShaver writes, larger trees sequester more carbon than smaller trees, but only if they are still growing. In a "fully-grown" forest (as per the title) that process has ended — decay and regrowth ...
- 2,784
6
votes
Planting trees for firewood - how many?
True sustainability is not dependent on outside sources. Try to learn the art of coppicing for fire wood, along with growing self propagating plants such as black locust which grows fast and produces ...
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5
votes
What is the climate impact of planting one tree?
This depends obviously on the size of the tree, but I read somewhere that a tree ready for harvesting into sawlogs can be about 0.6 solid cubic meters in a boreal taiga forest (spruce or pine).
One ...
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5
votes
What are eco-friendly substitutes of wood?
Coconut tree and Bamboo are two alternatives of timber i can think of, if you want wood's characteristics you mentioned.
strength
acceptable
rate of biodegradability
you'll worry about how to ...
5
votes
Accepted
How should biochar be used in a forest soil?
Be gentle with an existing forest.
If your trees are already in place, then you may put the biochar directly in place around the trunks of the trees you want to help grow. You may rake the soil to ...
- 1,365
5
votes
What type of guinea pigs will keep a food forest well cleaned?
We kept 70 - 80 wild guinea pigs in the back of our lot for perhaps four months. They free-ranged the pasture during the daytime and slept in sturdy cages at night. Every few weeks we would move the ...
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4
votes
How can an individual support mass reforestation?
I'll start with my own answer including some examples I'm aware of to help set context, and I'll highlight in bold some uncertainties. This will be a community wiki so we can build this list together ...
3
votes
How is amount of wood measured?
Typically, where I live, forestry professionals use solid cubic meter of wood as the primary measurement. But, let's define all of the measurements. In this answer, I use the metric ton (1000 kg) as ...
- 4,257
3
votes
How can an individual support mass reforestation?
Buy degraded/abused land in strategic locations (which should be cheap as a result). (Re-)Plant trees. Place a conservation covenant over the property so that future owners are legally required to ...
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3
votes
Accepted
How is lumbering bad for the climate?
Sometimes it is, sometimes it isn't.
If you have a forest that is cleared with no intention whatsoever to re-plant a new forest, that is bad for the climate. You can't make all of the trees into ...
- 4,257
2
votes
How much wood can I burn sustainably, carbon neutral and in an ecologically responsible way from a forest?
To be ecologically truly sustainable, no live trees should be cut. That will most closely mimic a natural ecosystem instead of turning them into managed tree plantations (which ain't properly forests)....
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2
votes
How much wood can I burn sustainably, carbon neutral and in an ecologically responsible way from a forest?
How much energy could we actually gain from biomass from a given forest size if it was actually green?
Primary productivity is the term used to describe the rate at which energy is converted into ...
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2
votes
What is the climate impact of planting one tree?
The pure maths in your question.
Trees both absorb and emit CO2. The difference is stocked in wood. You should not see those 2 figures (CO2 cycle and stocked carbon) as 2 different inputs, they're ...
- 21
2
votes
Is burning wood the same as letting it biodegrade from a CO2 emissions perspective?
I think a review of photosynthesis is in order. The CO2 plants take in are actually stored as sugars. Burning this will release it, but wood that decomposes naturally would have those sugars broken ...
- 365
2
votes
Is burning wood the same as letting it biodegrade from a CO2 emissions perspective?
Yes and no.
The answer to the question you asked is yes. Biodegradation produces carbon dioxide and heat. The heat of biodegradation will be wasted. It makes much more sense to usefully harvest the ...
- 4,257
2
votes
Is burning wood the same as letting it biodegrade from a CO2 emissions perspective?
The simple answer is that burning it would be roughly carbon neutral (it releases what it absorbed during growth) versus letting it decompose where it would be a carbon sink. Fossil fuels in the ...
- 269
2
votes
Would moving baby trees help with carbon sequestration?
I think you'll find that in areas where forests are managed, baby trees come from a central location the only purpose of which is to grow lots of these small baby trees.
The trees are used to create a ...
- 4,257
2
votes
Would moving baby trees help with carbon sequestration?
By moving a tree from one area to another, that's -1 tree to the source and +1 tree to the destination, for a net change of 0 trees over the region. That probably won't make much of a difference ...
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2
votes
Accepted
Should we recycle paper products?
That paper is totally wrong.
Nobody except China is planning to install large amounts of fossil baseload power.
In developed nations, all increased power production is wind (on- and offshore) and ...
- 4,257
2
votes
Accepted
What percentage of wood is harvested for production of paper products?
You have to understand that paper production is rapidly declining.
In Finland, a country with large forestry industry, the rule of thumb is that about half of wood is used for sawlogs and about half ...
- 4,257
1
vote
What is the climate impact of planting one tree?
Every tree creates a micro-climate. It provides shelter in winter, shade in summer, protection from the wind... These are mitigating factors that make a house a little warmer, the garden a little more ...
- 11
1
vote
How much wood can I burn sustainably, carbon neutral and in an ecologically responsible way from a forest?
Zero.
And by that, I don't mean I'm against the economical sustainable use of forest -- forest should be used as much possible as is sustainable to limit carbon dioxide emissions. The problem is, ...
- 4,257
1
vote
Planting trees for firewood - how many?
I have been cutting poplar trees for firewood on my 11 acre mixed use property for a few years now , since I have retired . I discovered many 50 to 60 foot tall trees , straight with few limbs , and ...
- 11
1
vote
How do I properly colonize trees to work together in a food forest?
Summer can be a bad time for planting trees.
I normally overlay a google map with topography and design on that map. I am not an expert on companion planting with the species you list, but a fungal ...
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