Carbon in Old Growth Canopies & the Importance of Keeping these Ecosystems Healthy

When we talk about ‘carbon storage’ in forests, we often only think of the carbon in the trees themselves, that which has been absorbed as CO2, converted to sugars through photosynthesis and stored, but in actuality, a large amount of the carbon stored in these ecosystems exists in the organic matter that makes up the soils.

In tropical forests this can be 50% of the carbon in an ecosystem, 60% in temperate forests, and 70% in boreal forests, where colder temperatures limit the amount of decomposition occurring. This is all the rich organic matter of dead and decaying wood, branches, leaves, etc that collects over time and is broken down by fungi and bacteria.

Yet new research has found that canopy soil in tropical forests, thats the soil that exists way up there in the canopy of big oldgrowth trees, can hold up to 10 times higher concentrations than the soil down here on the forest floor! This soils exists in what are known as epiphytic mats, where different epiphytes, or plants growing on other plants, have made home up in the canopy on the branches of trees, and their roots collect leaf litter, debris, decaying matter, mosses, etc to form a really dense soil comprised almost entirely of organic matter, which makes them an incredibly important resource for storing carbon that up until recently, had never even been considered!

Just as oldgrowth trees take centuries to grow, this canopy soil takes just as long to form, so when we log these areas, not only do we lose all the carbon stored in these trees and the rich carbon soil in their canopy, but the trophic web in the soil on the forest floor here dies, exposing to the elements that causes it to erode and rapidly leech that stored up carbon into the atmosphere, quickly undoing all of the good these forests have been doing for millennia.

So if we’re looking to mitigate the impacts of anthropogenic climate change by storing and sequestering as much carbon as possible, then ending clearcut logging to keep mature and oldgrowth forests standing while working to restore complexity in second growth forests is one of the best things we can do.

#oldgrowth #forest #ecology #carbon #climate #climatecrisis #logging