Such fires are not unusual. Since 2008, fires have consumed 44,000 square kilometres of forest in British Columbia, equal to about one tenth the area of the Province's commercial forest. And there is nothing special about the forests of British Columbia. Wildfires consume millions of hectares of forest across Canada almost every year.
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| Coldstream, BC, July 9, 2021: Source: Williams Lake Tribune |
And fires are not the only cause of forest destruction. Each year, Canadians log around a million hectares of forest, of which a significant proportion may be converted to ranch land or remaindered as NSR (not sufficiently restocked) forest land in the continuation of a process of deforestation begun in 1608 when Samuel Champlain, with the blessing of King Henri Quatre of France, arrived on the shore of the Gulf of St. Lawrence to implant a branch of the French nation in North America.
The process of forest destruction is not uniquely Canadian: it occurs worldwide, across Eurasia, in Amazonia, and throughout Africa, with losses totaling around 100,000 square kilometres each year.
Does that matter?
Certainly it has huge consequences. Forests account for around 80% of the world's biomass, most of the world's photosynthetic capacity, and provide home to the great majority of the World's plant and animal species.
But here I want to consider just one consequence. How does deforestation affect atmospheric carbon dioxide concentration, with whatever consequences that may have for climate.
The atmosphere weights about 10 tons per square meter. Of that mass, carbon dioxide accounts for 596 parts per million (or 416 parts per million by volume). Therefore, over each square meter of Earth's surface, the atmosphere contains approximately six kilograms of carbon dioxide.
The carbon content of mature forests range between one hundred and one thousand tons per hectare, which is equivalent to between 160 to 1,600 kilograms of carbon dioxide per square meter.
From that, it follows that the destruction of one unit area of forest and the complete transformation of the carbon that it contains into atmospheric carbon dioxide, has an effect equal to that of doubling the atmospheric carbon dioxide concentration over an area between 26 and 266 times greater than the area deforested.
Given the current rate of global deforestation, which is around 100,000 square kilometers a year, or an area 8% larger than the nation of Hungary, and assuming an average forest carbon content of 100 tons, it follows that the yearly effect of deforestation on atmospheric carbon dioxide concentration corresponds to the effect of doubling the atmospheric carbon dioxide concentration over an area of 6.6 million square kilometres, an area more than 70 times the size of Hungary, and equal to 1.2% of the Earth's total land and marine surface.
Thus, if the process of global deforestation were to continue at the present rate for the next 100 years, the world would still retain three quarters of its present forest area, but all other things being equal, atmospheric carbon dioxide concentration would have doubled.
Related:
CanSpeccy: Rising Atmospheric Carbon Dioxide Concentration, Part I: Carbon Dioxide Is Not a Greenhouse Gas
The process of forest destruction is not uniquely Canadian: it occurs worldwide, across Eurasia, in Amazonia, and throughout Africa, with losses totaling around 100,000 square kilometres each year.
Does that matter?
Certainly it has huge consequences. Forests account for around 80% of the world's biomass, most of the world's photosynthetic capacity, and provide home to the great majority of the World's plant and animal species.
But here I want to consider just one consequence. How does deforestation affect atmospheric carbon dioxide concentration, with whatever consequences that may have for climate.
The atmosphere weights about 10 tons per square meter. Of that mass, carbon dioxide accounts for 596 parts per million (or 416 parts per million by volume). Therefore, over each square meter of Earth's surface, the atmosphere contains approximately six kilograms of carbon dioxide.
The carbon content of mature forests range between one hundred and one thousand tons per hectare, which is equivalent to between 160 to 1,600 kilograms of carbon dioxide per square meter.
From that, it follows that the destruction of one unit area of forest and the complete transformation of the carbon that it contains into atmospheric carbon dioxide, has an effect equal to that of doubling the atmospheric carbon dioxide concentration over an area between 26 and 266 times greater than the area deforested.
Given the current rate of global deforestation, which is around 100,000 square kilometers a year, or an area 8% larger than the nation of Hungary, and assuming an average forest carbon content of 100 tons, it follows that the yearly effect of deforestation on atmospheric carbon dioxide concentration corresponds to the effect of doubling the atmospheric carbon dioxide concentration over an area of 6.6 million square kilometres, an area more than 70 times the size of Hungary, and equal to 1.2% of the Earth's total land and marine surface.
Thus, if the process of global deforestation were to continue at the present rate for the next 100 years, the world would still retain three quarters of its present forest area, but all other things being equal, atmospheric carbon dioxide concentration would have doubled.
Related:
CanSpeccy: Rising Atmospheric Carbon Dioxide Concentration, Part I: Carbon Dioxide Is Not a Greenhouse Gas
