Boreal case study

The diagram below summarises some of the key ways trees in the boreal forest have adapted to the abiotic factors of this area

Case study - The fate of Siberian forests Background information
Total area = 8.8 M sq km; (57% world Boreal Forest).

The Siberian approach to forests! In Boguchany, Siberia, 20,000 prisoners are set to work logging for punishment - the resultant timber is not used, its purpose was merely to occupy prisoners time. This represents a criminal waste of forest!

Such deforestation devastates local ecosystems and reduces wildlife food sources for indigenous people.

To make better use of the logs, the Boguchany dam (a local HEP project) is being built for processing logs. This at least reduces waste, but puts further stress on the forest... more forest destruction will occur by flooding for the reservior.

Meanwhile in the neighbouring region of Bratsk, Siberia, 100,000 Ha forest has been destroyed by air pollion from aluminium smelters, power stations and chemical factories. This also affects humans ....local mortality rates increased 25% in last 10 yrs.

Temperate forest case studies

The Forestry Commission in the UK are pursuing MPF (multipurpose forestry). Timber, employment, landscapes, watersheds, biodiversity, habitat considered together (but timber production takes priority!).

UK has 10% tree cover but only 2.5% native/seminative (since conifers in UK have 2-3 x broadleaved growth rate so are planted commercially.

A mere 30,000 Ha of broadleaved forest is coppiced in UK but the trend is rising (see below)

Plans and projects:

Trees for Life group based in Scotland plan a 1,500sq km "Central Highland Forest" with wolves etc to recreate native forest on a grand scale.

Sussex wildlife trust - plans for a 5,000 Ha Weald Forest - large scale unmanaged controlled by natural grazers inc wild boar. "Minumum intervention regime" from which some timber cropped.

National Forest - (FC & Countryside Commision) - planned a 500sqkm in Midlands for MPF with an aim to have 30% forest cover within the designated area.

Future potential

A growing market is charcoal. Britain uses an estimated 60 000 tonnes a year, mostly for barbeques. Much of it imported from endangered tropical mangrove swamps. In recent months, stores ranging from Harrods to B&Q, the home improvement chain, have agreed to supply charcoal from British wood. Coppiced wood is also still used for a variety of jobs, from fencing and thatching to making barrel hoops, tent pegs and walking sticks.

Every tonne of dry coppiced wood could generate as much electricity as 650 kilograms of coal, and save the release of up to 500 kilograms of carbon into the atmosphere

UK Government recently gave the go-ahead for three wood-burning plants to produce 19 megawatts from coppice wood and forest waste. That implies an initial 5000 hectares of coppices, says Damian Culshaw of ETSU. The largest project is the Arbre power station. This 75 million project, headed by Yorkshire Water, is backed by the EU and companies from France, Germany and Sweden

The 8- megawatt plant will turn wood chips into a mixture of carbon monoxide and dioxide, hydrogen and methane, while a new catalytic process will break big hydrocarbons into combustible compounds. The gases will then be burnt in a gas turbine, and the heat produced used to drive a steam turbine. This should produce about twice as much electricity from each tonne of wood as simply burning it and driving a steam generator,

This year some 100 000 square kilometres of pristine rainforest - an area roughly the size of Iceland - will be burnt to the ground to produce farmland. A further 50 000 square kilometres will be invaded by logging companies intent on extracting timber of high commercial value. Nobody doubts that the burning will cause irreversible destruction, of both trees and wildlife. But what of the logging? The conventional view of timber extraction is that it is the kiss of death for a rainforest. Loggers move in with their roads and heavy tractors, remove the most valuable timber and then abandon the forest, depleted, to slash-and-burn farmers. But does it have to be like this? The International Tropical Timber Organisation, a trade association set up by the 47 nations of the world that either produce or import tropical timber, thinks not. Driven by public concern and necessity - many of the world's rainforests will be exhausted within two decades if things do not change - ITTO has become an evangelist for sustainable logging. It has set itself the target of making responsible, 'scientific' logging the norm throughout the tropical world by the year 2000.

Questions unanswered
Many environmentalists remain profoundly sceptical. They point to the ITTO's abysmal track record on policing the timber industry and the fact that less than 0.1 per cent of the world's rainforest is at present under any form of sustainable management. Everyone agrees that without enormous political will this situation is unlikely to change. But even if the will is there, how can we be sure that any future logging practices dubbed 'sustainable' by the timber industry really do allow rainforest the chance to regenerate? Underlying this question are some thorny scientific problems. <UL?

  • Just how resilient are rainforests to small-scale disturbances?
  • How fast can they repair gaps in their canopies? And
  • What, if any, is the ecological value of the 'secondary' vegetation which often emerges after a rainforest has been logged?
Join now!

Five years ago we set about finding some answers in Borneo, home to one of the world's richest rainforests. We joined a team of scientists from Britain and Southeast Asia at the Royal Society's field station in Danum Valley, Sabah, one of the most heavily logged regions of Malaysia. Our mission was to study the impact on a small area of rainforest - its vegetation, microclimate, wildlife, insects and so on - of creating holes in its canopy. Recently we met other botanists and ecologists at the Royal Society in London to discuss in detail what we have found so ...

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