NSW Bushfires Mean That Carbon Uptake May Falter, Even If Burned Areas Grow Back
Australia's bushfires have been so devastating, the country's forests may not be able to reabsorb the toxic carbon dioxide produced by the blazes, climate scientists say. Bushfires are normally considered to be "carbon neutral" because, unlike fossil fuels, their emissions output is reabsorbed when the vegetation in fire-affected areas regrows.
However, experts fear the sheer scale and intensity of this year's unprecedented fires, coupled with worsening drought conditions, has disrupted this recovery process. The NSW Department of Planning, Industry and Environment said it was yet to determine size of the fires' carbon footprint.
According to the Global Fire Emissions Database, the fires in the Amazon Rainforest in Brazil — which were burning at a rate not seen in almost a decade — added 14 million tonnes of carbon to the atmosphere this year.
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David Bowman, a professor of environmental change biology at the University of Tasmania, has been worried about this "nightmare scenario" for a decade. "In a stable climate it's like a bank account, where a fire comes along and burns some forest and releases carbon," he said. "When the forestry regrows it's like putting money back into your account. Over the years, your bank balance account is about the same."
He said intense fires were like "huge transactions", but the "high mortality rate" of NSW and Queensland forests meant they were not taking back the carbon being withdrawn. The blazes, he said, had been so savage that even the famously resilient dry sclerophyll and eucalyptus forests were not likely to regenerate effectively. The drought had already stressed the hardy trees through depriving them of nutrients, leaving them likely to regrow slower and smaller, if at all.
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https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-12-12/nsw-qld-bushfires-could-increase-carbon-footprint-scientists-say/11789504
