Kyoto's Global Warming Controls Could Harm Forests

"Replacement of old forests with plantations is a 'perverse incentive' of the Kyoto Protocol," says Reed Noss of Conservation Science, Inc. in Corvallis, Oregon, in the June issue of Conservation Biology. "The protocol could easily do more harm than good unless accompanied by strong incentives to protect biodiversity."

While the U.S. commitment is now in doubt under the Bush administration, the government had planned to meet half its annual commitment through land-based carbon sinks. Noss urges countries to conserve old-growth forests and to put any tree plantations on marginal agricultural lands.

Noss also considered how to protect forests during climate change. The good news is that forests have already survived many periods of dramatic warming and cooling, in part by shifting, contracting and expanding their ranges.

The bad news is that it will be harder for trees and other species in today's fragmented and degraded forests to shift their ranges in response to climate change.

To help forests adapt to climate change, Noss recommends two main approaches. First, we should maintain or restore connections between forests. These include elevational corridors so species can move up or down mountains as necessary, as well as corridors along the Mississippi Valley and other major north-south river valleys that allowed dispersal during past climate changes.

Second, we should protect climate refugia, which are areas that harbored species during past climate changes. Probable climate refugia include the southern Appalachians and the Klamath-Siskiyou region of California and Oregon; Iberia, Italy and the Balkans; and rock outcrops, cool slopes and many other small areas.