Colorado forests emit more CO2 than they absorb due to insects, wildfire
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Researchers at Colorado State University have found the state's nearly 23 million acres of forests are currently releasing more carbon dioxide into the atmosphere than they capture.
Tony Vorster, research scientist in the Natural Resource Ecology Laboratory at Colorado State University and the report's lead author, said forests act as both "sinks" and "sources" for carbon. Trees naturally absorb carbon dioxide through photosynthesis, and the process is reversed when trees die and decompose.
"When you look at the contributors to that release of carbon, a lot of it, 64 percent of it is due to insect and disease," Vorster outlined. "Twenty percent of it is due to fire, and about 15 percent of it is areas that have been cut."
Red spruce tree.
The carbon emissions data will likely increase, because since the last tests were conducted in 2019, the Cameron Peak, East Troublesome and Pine Gulch wildfires burned more than half a million acres. Burning fossil fuels is the single largest contributor of carbon emissions, the primary driver of climate change.
Vorster pointed out Colorado's forests continue to store lots of carbon, some 1,500 million metric tons, and they release less than 1 percent of that. Half of a tree's actual mass is made up of carbon.
"They hold carbon that would otherwise be in the atmosphere as carbon dioxide," Vorster emphasized. "The amount of carbon stored in the forests is equivalent to about 1.3 billion passenger vehicles on the road for a year."
The report suggested it might not be enough to rely on existing forests to offset man-made climate pollution and mitigate the effects of a changing climate. Vorster added the current trend, where forests release more carbon than they capture, is likely to continue with prolonged drought and bigger and more frequent wildfires.
