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Community gardens and climate resilient cropping provide alternatives to polluting mud drags.

Coalition calls for deep reforms of practices, ownership, subsidies and incentives

New Report Shows “Climate Threat” of Proposed Nez Perce-Clearwater Forest Plan

It’s no secret that landscapes dominated by clearcuts, logging roads, and timber plantations pose significant public health and safety risks by amplifying the effects of heat waves, drought, water shortages, wildfires, landslides, floods, invasive species and other stressors already on the rise due to climate change. The pool of research documenting these effects is robust, and growing. Recently, CSE teamed up with Dr. Christopher Still at Oregon State University to add to that body of research by comparing and contrasting the effects of the unprecedented 2021 Pacific Northwest heat wave on undisturbed, old growth forest vs. heavily clearcut and degraded forestlands near Cougar Reservoir in Oregon’s central Cascades and in southwest Washington. The technical report is now available and can be viewed and downloaded here . Key findings include: The loss and degradation of primary forests is driving climate change and amplifying the severity of heat waves and droughts. The unprecedented Pacific Northwest heat dome of 2021 provides an opportunity to compare and contrast the climatic responses of undisturbed primary forests to deforested and degraded lands. Using NASA’s Visible Infrared Imaging Radiometer Suite (VIIRS) data, land surface temperatures of undisturbed vs. deforested and degraded forestlands in western Oregon were compared before, during and after the heat dome event. In two contrasting sites in southwest Washington, tower data from the National Ecological Observatory Network (NEON) was used to compare canopy temperatures, ecosystem fluxes of water, net ecosystem carbon exchange, and ecosystem photosynthesis. At the western Oregon region of interest, the mean, maximum, and minimum land surface temperature was always higher on the deforested and degraded lands. During the heat dome event, the undisturbed forest was 5.5 ºC cooler ( 94.8 ºF vs. 104.7 ºF). At the NEON sites in Washington and relative to the undisturbed old growth forest, the degraded (plantation) site was hotter (~4.5 ºC), lost more water, was less efficient at photosynthesis, and experienced a more dramatic impact to carbon cycling, flipping from a sink to a source during the heat dome event. The results suggest that as heat and drought intensify with climate change, maintaining the extent of undisturbed forest and reducing the extent of deforested and degraded lands may be important for mitigating the effects of heat waves, conserving water supplies, and reducing wildfire risk. This technical report will be split into two papers for peer reviewed journals and likely published in the fall. In the meantime, CSE will continue to work with legislators and county commissions in Oregon and Washington to advocate for changes in forest practices and comprehensive land use plans to better protect nearby communities from these growing public health and safety threats. Stay tuned for updates on this work. Read: Still, C., Talberth, J. 2022. Deforestation, Forest Degradation, Heat Waves and Drought. Evidence from the Pacific Northwest Heat Dome of 2021.

As Congress accelerates work to pass two massive new spending bills – the budget Reconciliation ($3.5 trillion) and Infrastructure ($1.2 trillion) packages – lawmakers need to do the math to ensure that money is not thrown to programs that increase greenhouse gas pollution and reduce our ability to overcome the climate crisis. After all, one of the key selling points for each is their claimed climate benefits. Proponents of the Reconciliation package, for example, assert that some clean energy measures included in the bill, along with some in the Infrastructure package, would slash US carbon emissions by 880 million metric tons (0.88 gigatons) of annual CO2 emissions by 2030. However, as discussed below, the very recent elimination of the Clean Energy Performance Program (CEPP) from the Reconciliation package lowers the annual CO2 emissions reduction to only 0.38 gigatons by 2030. Moreover, buried within both bills are expenditures that would take us even further in the opposite direction – among them, massive subsidies for logging and highways that come with a steep carbon footprint. In combination with the elimination of CEPP, these climate-harming aspects of the Reconciliation and Infrastructure packages would actually increase net annual CO2 emissions by 2030 relative to current levels.