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April 07, 2020 , , , , , , , , ,

Mass tree planting in the UK could harm the environment if not planned properly, a report warns.

Badly-planned trees would increase greenhouse gas emissions, say the government’s advisers on the economic value of the natural environment.
The report comes from the Natural Capital Committee (NCC), which says planting trees into peat bogs would prove a serious mistake.
Peat locks up vast quantities of carbon - but trees dry out peat.
This can release more greenhouse gases than the trees absorb.
One NCC member, Prof Ian Bateman from the University of Exeter, said: “The mantra has to be ‘the right tree in the right place’.“
“We would be crazy to undertake the massive scale of planting being considered if we did not also consider the wider effects upon the environment including impacts on wildlife, benefits in terms of reducing flood risks and effects on water quality, improvements to recreation and so on.”

Will millions more trees really stop climate change?

Right trees in right places
The report adds that carpeting upland pastures with trees would reduce the UK’s ability to produce meat – which may lead to increasing imports from places that produce beef by felling rain forests.
It also makes a similar point on industry. There’s no point closing dirty UK factories, the authors say, if we’re then going to import goods from places with worse emissions.
The authors note that huge publicity has been given to the UK’s plans for planting 11 million trees to lock up carbon emissions, but they warn that conserving carbon in soils is equally or more important.
The report points out that the Office for National Statistics (ONS) estimates that in 2007 UK soils contained approximately 4,019 million tonnes of carbon (MtC), that’s 94.2% of the total stock of biological carbon - excluding fossil fuel carbon.
They say soil degradation through erosion, intensive farming and development creates losses estimated at between £0.9 –1.4bn per year for England and Wales alone.

Soils underpin everything

Prof Kathy Willis from Oxford University and an NCC member, told BBC News: “We love looking at trees – we get all these positive emotions, smells and sounds – but most of us don't look at soil that actually underpins everything.”
The NCC calls for much better monitoring of soils. And it says that farming on lowland peat such as the rich fields of East Anglia should be halted if soil there continues to be lost.
This recommendation may be strongly resisted by farmers, although some of them say they’re addressing the problem by using “cover crops” to bind the soil together while cash crops are being planted.
The Country Land and Business Association have been approached to comment.
The NCC notes previous reports projecting a reduction in the consumption of amount of red meat and dairy produce by at least 20% per person and reducing food waste by 20%.
This implies around a 10% reduction in cattle and sheep numbers by 2050, compared with 2017 levels.
The report outlines the scale of the challenge for measures taken to tackle climate change through land use policies in the UK.
It says: “These figures make it clear that – far from being an option for major offsetting of emissions from other sectors – the measures will not even mitigate the emissions of the agriculture, land use and peat lands sectors."
Source: By Roger Harrabin (BBC)
BBC environment analystDate: 7th April, 2020
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April 05, 2020 , , , , , , ,
The findings suggest that Earth's southernmost continent was once home to temperate, swampy rain forests teeming with life.


Antarctica is now a harsh land of ice and snow, but has not always been that way.
Earth’s southernmost continent long ago was home to temperate, swampy rain forests teeming with life, scientists said on Wednesday based on pristinely preserved forest soil they retrieved by drilling under the seafloor off Antarctica’s coast.
The sediment core obtained by scientists working aboard the research icebreaker RV Polarstern in the Amundsen Sea near the Pine Island Glacier dated to about 90 million years ago during the Cretaceous Period when dinosaurs were the dominant land animals.
The researchers estimated based on the soil content that this location, 560 miles (900 km) from the South Pole, experienced average annual temperatures of about 53-55 degrees Fahrenheit (12-13 Celsius) and average temperatures during the warmest summer months of about 68-77 Fahrenheit (20-25 Celsius).
That is exceptionally warm for a location near the South Pole, where the average annual temperature now is around minus 40 Fahrenheit (minus 40 Celsius).
A modern temperature analogue may be New York City, according to marine geologist Johann Klages of the Alfred Wegener Institute’s Helmholtz Center for Polar and Marine Research in Germany, lead author of the research published in the journal Nature.
The dark-brownish gray soil was composed of fine-grained silt and clay bearing remains of fossil roots in a dense network, pollen and spores spanning 65 types of plants, with individual cell structures clearly visible.
“If you would go to a forest near you and drill a hole, it would probably look pretty similar,” Klages said.
Klages said the plants included conifers, ferns and flowering plants. While they did not find any animal remains, Klages said there likely were dinosaurs, flying reptiles called pterosaurs and many insects. Dinosaur fossils from Antarctica have been known for years.
The soil came from nearly 90 feet (27 meters) beneath the seafloor under ocean depths of about 3,300 feet (1,000 meters). It was obtained using a seafloor drill rig.
The research underscores the dramatic climate changes Earth has undergone in the past - and is currently undergoing today.
The soil core sample dated from 93-83 million years ago, Klages said. This dates from the planet’s warmest period of the past 140 million years, with sea levels about 560 feet (170 meters) higher than today.
The rainforest environment is all the more remarkable, the researchers said, considering that the region annually experiences a four-month polar night when there is no sunlight to nurture plant life. Klages said no ice sheets were present at the time though seasonal snow fall was likely.

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