#106 Carbon Cycles at Scheier Natural Arera
October 9, 2008
At Scheier Natural Area in Fluvanna County, forester Steve Pence describes how a forest in succession contributes to the carbon cycle.
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This show originally aired on October 5, 2006 and as an encore on October 9, 2008 on “The Rivanna Rambler,” a weekly public affairs show airing every Thursday at 11:55 a.m. on WTJU 91.1 FM or wtju.net.
Summer is having its last licks in the Piedmont, spreading a layer of warm heavy air over the southwestern reaches of the Rivanna watershed in Fluvanna. My destination is Scheier Natural Area 10 miles west of Palmyra. Rolling hills farmed in hay give way to patches of forest and modest houses set back from the road. Goldenrod and Queen Anne’s lace offer patches of color and light. Here and there, I can see the peaks of pine emerging like soldiers from behind an unruly patch of trees, evidence of land reclaimed for growing timber. In the distance, the mountain to the west sit blue and cool on this muggy Sunday afternoon. I’m headed for a talk offered by the Rivanna Conservation Society, who owns the 100 acre preserve.
As I join the group late, Steve Pence, of the Virginia Department of Forestry, has already warmed to the subjects of the role of trees in our lives and the changing climate, a complex subject at best. Steve has worked with trees his entire career, so I trust that any opinions he offers are informed. He’s just finishing up on the basics of the carbon cycle – how trees breathe in carbon dioxide and give off the oxygen so necessary to human life. And talking about the difference, from a forester’s point of view, between carbon sequestration and carbon sink, terms we should all be learning these days as we face the uncertainties of global climate change. “In short,” he says, “We need plants; but they don’t need us.” This is a startling thought to me as I stand amidst a crop of young trees, two foot high seedlings of oak, beech, hickory and maple on the edge of the thicker woods beyond the gravel parking lot.
Carbon sequestration is the term used to describe how carbon, the ubiquitous and necessary building block of life, is removed from the atmosphere as a young forest of
rapidly growing trees absorbs carbon dioxide, resulting in a reserve called a carbon sink. If, on the other hand, a forest is allowed to mature, it’s ability to “take up” or remove carbon from the atmosphere is slowed, resulting in a dynamic equilibrium: as trees die and decompose, they give up the carbon to the soil and atmosphere. As new trees grow in their place, these youngsters utilize the carbon in the atmosphere to photosynthesize — hence the green leaves, the underground roots, the colors of fall, and the shelter from the storm.
Proactive efforts to mitigate global warming often include planting trees, to accelerate this process of removing carbon from the atmosphere. However, the rate at which forests can sequester carbon, given the available land, is far exceeded by the rate at which it is released by the combustion of the fossilized forests that we have removed from the carbon sinks in the form of coal, oil and natural gas. The facts remain that to reduce carbon emissions in the US by 7% , as stipulated in the Kyoto Protocol, would require the planting of “an area the size of Texas every 30 years”, according to William Schlesinger, of Duke University.
When Howard Scheier bought this land in the 1950’s, it was open and agricultural, farmed successively in corn, cotton, and tobacco since the last century. He planted loblolly pine, reclaiming the land as trees. In the 1980’s, when the pine bark beetle was starting to impact forests in Virginia, Mr. Scheier proactively harvested all loblollies on his property, leaving the young hardwoods that had sprouted in the understory to grow and thrive. These trees, now almost sixty years old, are the ones beyond the kiosk, through which over three miles of trails wind, traversing the gentle upland landscape of the upper Cunningham Creek watershed.
After the talk, I enter the forest, selecting the Red Trail, which loops around the perimeter of the land, which is, in a word, sweet, if you can call a forest such a thing. And somehow it does seem young, the verdant green path, lush with patches of mosses, prolific in their own bloom. All around me, acorns drop to the ground, sharp thuds, punctuating the sound of my feet shuffling through fallen leaves. I wind down the slope to the South Fork of the Middle Cunningham, whose gentle banks are strewn with leaves, I see the water, a sure, slow trickle. Fish dart away from me as I walk the creek a few yards upstream, my shoes filling with sand and gravel. Here and there I see an upturned maple leaf, cupping a drink of water from the earlier rain in its palm
Mr Scheier’s gift stipulated that no living tree be removed from the land. Thus, this land will eventually reach its own equilibrium, an old growth stand surrounded by farms and younger forests. The term sequester is derived from the Latin sequestrar, meaning to hand over disputed property to a third party, a trustee. While the planet grows warmer, and the atmosphere richer in CO2, here in Fluvanna, 100 acres of forest are set aside in perpetuity and in trust, to grow rich with trees and the carbon that they store.