Does the Burning of Trees Contribute to Global warming?
- William Zhu
- May 25, 2022
- 1 min read
I have wondered why when discussing greenhouse gases, people always jump to fossil fuels while not mentioning much on biomass problems such as the burning of forests (wildfires).
The burning of biomass contributes to one third of global greenhouse gas emission. People optimistically think those gases can be absorbed if the forests or grasslands grow back. However, due to the fact that forests take decades to grow back, or may never grow back, the impact is significant. The more wildland fires, the more greenhouse gases are created leading to an increase in global warming. As a result, droughts occur making the forests more susceptible to fires. This is a vicious circle. In order to limit this cycle we need to use human initiatives such as removing deadwood or overgrown forests (burning is usually used, but these fires are controlled) to avoid as many wildfires as possible.
A surprising fact: Alaska has the most wildland fires in the United States, which is about 20% of the total wildland fire acres that is far above California's 12%.
Why? Alaska is in the arid climate zone, which is more vulnerable to rising temperature. As the temperature increases, the land is dried out fast, which is easy to catch a fire even from a thunderstorm.
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