Redwood Reader

13. Carbon Credits: Carbon Dioxide As A Resource
The restoration of the watershed is dependant on rebalancing the carbon and water cycles. The various mechanisms of the forest to slow and retain runoff are in a shambles, and as a result we have too much runoff and too little water late in the year creating a general lowering of the water table, fewer springs, dried up tributaries and fish nurseries in late summer, dust, lower fuel moisture content and higher temperatures. Creeks and rivers are filled with sediment causing channels to flood easily, scouring the banks for miles and denuding the streams of shade, raising water temperatures. The easiest, fastest surest way to aquatic health is forest maturation and runoff control with the emphasis on infiltration rather than drainage. The fastest way to keep people from doing things is to pay them not to do whatever it was you wanted stopped. We need big trees, and not for cutting.
In the leaves of photosynthetic plants things happen that we now understand. Water from the roots combines with CO2 from the air in the presence of the suns energy. Sugar is produced and oxygen emitted. Without sun, at night, the process is reversed. Roots convert simple sugar into an array of products needed by the tree. Excess carbon is exuded out the root hairs where mycorrhizal fungi feed on it. The mycorhizzia extend threadlike tubes into the surrounding environment called hyphae
Most plants (except the Brassica family) have symbiotic alliances with fungi. These fungi infect root hairs extending the reach of the plant. Fungi are not primary producers. They are symbiotic with primary producers and so count on the trees for nutrition. The plants count on the mycorhizzia to find water and especially phosphorus. The fungi allow the trees to gather nutrients from a much wider area than the trees roots themselves could have done, and create water and air spaces in the soil. It has been said no tree can live without fungal associates.
Succession in Douglas fir forests show types of fungi changing as the canopy closes, from morels at time of devastation, rhizopogons and seedlings, truffles as the canopy closes and chantrelles as the trees get big. The mycelial mats of hyphae have been shown to hold soils together. Mycorhizzia are well understood in crops but less well in forests. In cropland, a few species of fungi are concentrated in the top several feet of soil.
The root area is less well understood but that is changing quickly. The discovery of the working molecule glomalin by USDA researchers Sara Wright and Kristi Nichols at Beltsville should be the last piece of data we need to understand and implement a carbon storing mechanism. This free food allows the fungi to explore the region around itself looking for more host plants, water and nutrients. As the hyphae extend, they exude glomalin, a glycoprotein made of proteins and iron (1-9%) that stores carbon in the protein and carbohydrate (sugar) parts. Glomalin is 30-40% carbon. Glomalin is found on the outside of the hyphae suggesting it seals the hyphae tubes so they can carry water and nutrients and or strengthens the hyphae to cross air pockets in the soil.
Glomalin holds three times as much carbon in the soil as humic acid, previously believed to be the largest carbon storage mechanism in the soil. It is sticky and binds soil and roots, and lasts 7 to 42 years in the ground. Glomalin gives the mycelia the strength to hold landscapes together. Research shows a mass of proteins with an added iron atoms gives glomalin the ability to bind soil particles into tough aggregates, known to farmers and gardeners as tilth a previously obvious but mysterious quality. A similar mixture of proteins and iron has recently been shown to be the glue that holds marine mussels to rocks in the surf zone. This allows more water storage in the ground, more air spaces, and in trees, the prospect that trees will continue to expand their root zone, extending the hyphae, aggregating the soil and storing carbon long after the commercial growth rate has stopped. The amount of soil affected by tree removal is far greater than the surface wasting we see. Swift describes the release of subsoil carbon caused by erosion and suggests glomalin cannot hold soil together after it is impacted by heat, water, or air. Loss of glomalin will eventually be seen as the cause of mass wasting in the hills, whether by clearcut, roadbuilding, compaction, overgrazing or development.
As roots thicken and become woodier the fungi move down the root to the growing tip. Older hyphae die and glomalin sloughs off binding soil particles into aggregates and conditioning the soil. Each year new root hairs expand the root zone and the hyphae move into the new soil area repeating the process. An interesting quality of glomalin is that production of hyphae and glomalin rise as CO2 rises. A rise from a normal 370ppm to 670 ppm, projected for the middle to late century, produced triple the hyphae growth and created FIVE times the glomalin. Old growth would seem to have far more ability to fix this carbon than young forests just in root mass, carbon collecting mast and extensive hyphael networks, as well as rooting deeper into the ground and creating more carbon and water storage volume.
It is the trees job to protect the soil from running water while collecting and processing carbon dioxide. It does this by breaking the falling power of drops into smaller particles, slowing their fall through the leaves and branch, running down trunks, creating a natural mulch of debris on the ground, further the fragmenting the water droplet until it is usable by microbe or hyphae. It also combs the fog for summer moisture
Glomalin accumulates in the soil over years and is a long lived molecule in the soil, seven to forty two years. In a four year field study at Beltsville Agricultural Research Station, glomalin rose each year after beginning a no-till regime, from 1.3 mg/g to 1.7 mg/g in the third year. A nearby control buffer untilled for fifteen years had 2.7 mg/g. Other Mid-Atlantic soils held up to 15mg/g. The highest rates found so far are in Japan and Hawaii, up to 100 mg/g. But glomalin appeared shorter lived in humid tropics in another study in Costa Rica. There is a lot to learn.
The ability of farms and forests to hold carbon has been generally ignored or under recognized. Foresters claimed as much carbon went into a tree came out again when it is cut, all the carbon would return to the atmosphere through eventual burning or decomposition. Some studies show 150-300 tons of soil organic matter per acre, but glomalin was destroyed or ignored in earlier soil carbon testing. It is now known most carbon in the forest lies in the duff and soil, although there is plenty in wood too. The main players here are decomposing bacteria and fungi. Beneficial bacteria live inside hyphae shielded from predators.
Fungi consume the carbon products the tree exudes from its roots. They infect the root tips making them more permeable, and extend hyphae into the environment searching for nutrients, especially potassium, and water. These hyphae will infect other plants and take advantage of their roots as well, creating a small network of individuals and species tied together by the transport mycelium. If one host dies there is a backup. Some studies show a conifer and a hardwood, together with forbs and shrubs, colonized by the same species as a regular pattern. These associations could be mapped with C-14, as has been done in Britain to determine plant/fungal networks connected by hyphae.
Most species of fungi focus on a single type of nutrient for which it has developed an enzyme. Glomalin appears to be free of these consumers, although the hyphae that produce it are estimated to live only days to weeks. As a plants hyphae-root network extends through the duff, debris is broken down, successive types of fungi process plant material and leave the residue for the next type of fungi, each contributing to the glomalin accumulation. Douglas fir is known to associate with over three thousand varieties of fungi, 26 species found in one needle alone. In addition, different species of fungi occupy a given area in succession as the area matures: morels on devastated land, rhizopogons help establish young trees, truffles appear when the canopy closes followed by chanterelles as the forest matures,
The one other notable quality for our purposes is the binding ability of the glomalin producing mycelium to soil particles, creating one connected surface able to withstand and even benefit from major rain events while preventing erosion and mass wasting, and percolating rainfall deep into the ground while increasing the soils ability to store that water. This is the water that keeps springs and creeks running late in the summer and early fall.
The fact that trees produce far more carbon than just the wood and crown gives us the right tool to manage our wild lands on an even basis with industry, indeed gives us an opportunity of great consequence, the same way that established rates of growth allowed timber to be seen as an investment. But they only saw it as wood, and not the entire carbon production of an entire forest system with its myriad of subsoil associations, vegetative hydrology and gigantic carbon fixing ability.
Glomalin management has been at the heart of many agricultural developments and programs knowingly or not. Recognition that the most profitable means of production meant destruction of the environment that allowed for that profit is an ancient tale repeated throughout the world and history. Today we see the results of glomalin mismanagement on a landscape scale: landslides, sediment choked streams, habitat destruction, soils that become easily saturated to the point of failing and dry out earlier every year because the porous zone has shrunk and the soil glue is gone, and running water and precipitation cutting directly into the ground.
We can make big changes easily through management that restores forests, fisheries, and water supplies while creating windfalls for any landowner, including parks, governments, agencies, companies, private landowners, and eventually, suburban and urban landowners. The need for restoration dollars would fall drastically and switch from grants to outside corporate funding. The value of picked mushrooms or other special forest products and hunting and fishing leases can increase the per acre annual return. The same can be said for mast crops. Full canopy closure would be a natural result, with zero runoff and prime wildlife habitat created by accident. The need to preserve land would melt away as lands mature into production needing vegetative management and maintenance.
Carbon credit trading is becoming a commodity in the national and world markets. While there may be a lot more to study we can begin managing crop and forest land as one storage unit, rented for a certain amount for an indefinite period. Landowners are equal or classed by vegetation type or age. Using satellite data, take a state snapshot showing veg layers. Crunch this with GIS to produce coverage maps. Let a big power, like the State or Congress, or a created and empowered agency to sell so many acres of carbon sink for X dollars, say $50/acre/year, about enough to pay forest maintenance and land taxes for a year on rural property. We should be able to quantify the amount of carbon stored per acre per year for various management styles and plants as part of the cost of doing starting a new business and giving us a dollar value. Place the veg layer over the property tax maps and pay accordingly. Landowners get paid for all acreage with total canopy or production in no-till and pasture areas. The goal is zero surface runoff, year round flows of high quality cool water paid for by carbon banking.
Who gets the dough? All landowners. Let schools and agencies supplement their budgets. Let good past managers be rewarded. Punish folks who create runoff by withdrawing their annual pay until the canopy closes back over- say 35 years. Directly tie checks to GIS layers. Deduct 1 acre for every 660 foot of 60-foot road and scaling up from there. Building overflow sumps to hold runoff at peak times or using permeable road base, can restore these lands into water productive areas rather than potential land failures. Any development immediately removes that acreage from the payee role. Use a new picture every year. Almost everyone eligible would lose some percentage to open canopy areas whether buildings, roads, rights of ways, streams etc. The threat of loss by fire would entice owners to keep their forests in good order to prevent fuel buildup or other dangerous conditions.
As the foresters noted, the carbon from a tree is mostly returned to the atmosphere when a tree is felled. However, fungi cannot tolerate infrared radiation. Running water and ambient air, which nature protects with a full canopy and duff layer, destroys glomalin. Fungi themselves are destroyed by ultraviolet. 85% of soil carbon is lost to the atmosphere in the year after clear-cut harvest. Therefore select cuts that do not disturb the soil and retain say 70% canopy would not reduce payment. A road to that tree would. Landings take land out too. Every disturbed, unshaded or compacted acre would become unqualified and lose its right to money but select cutting and commercial thinning would still be fine. Similarly cropland can store carbon when no-till methods are utilized. This, however, may threaten our concept of the advantages of organic farming.
The reason for this is the fact of continual cultivation to control weeds disrupts the underground workings of the soil interactions. No-till farming methods preserve the glomalin and actually encourage carbon storage, and have risen to include one third of U. S. cropland. This is the essential role of genetically modified (GM) crops- to survive weed control spraying so no-till methods can be used. I have seen nothing yet on no-till using landscape cloth for weed control.
Higher flows and larger anadramous fish runs will be apparent before the new forestry fully matures. Sport fishing should be a barometer as well as the eventual replacement funding for carbon credits, which should be declining due to less dependence on fossil fuels. Habitat improvements will come easily in the new environment. Stand improvement and protection, fuel reduction and habitat improvement would be done regularly by people trained and paid to manage these resources, creating local jobs and protecting and enhancing every wild land community.
The implications of glomalin are enormous in many fields of science with many aspects as yet unknown. A working model of the molecule will soon allow researchers to analyze this amazing molecule. Research chemists will be sure to see if it is harvestable or has any marketable use. Coal, oil and gas found in sandstone and shale may be more fungal residue than plant material. Stores may be larger than we thought. How deep in the soil can it be found? In hydrology it explains the ability of land to store water, and how to increase the ability of land to hold water. It explains why we need to leave forest land shaded and ground cover intact. It shows us how and why to assist nature in recovery after traumatic events in the woods
“As carbon gets assigned a dollar value in a carbon commodity market, it may give literal meaning to the expression that good soil is black gold. And glomalin could be viewed as its golden seal.” Don Comis,Agricultural Research Service Information Staff.
Carbon dioxide emissions from destroyed glomalin are a known quantity in crop land but qpparently not in forests. Glomalin accumulation in old forests has not been quantified but is potentially a major unknown source of the rising CO2 levels so well known by now. It is the most important element in restoring damaged landscapes, collection of it creates biological habitats as well as timber, water and fish resources and the government is paying industry to pump it deep into the ground for a lot of money where it will be removed from the biological cycles for some time. Our ability to secure that resource and do that job is going to go to the wrong concept until we realize we need to pay people to store this resource, and that everyone benefits by its proper management.