This clip was created to highlight the woodchipping of SE Australia and its impacts on climate change. Logging in Australia is still being neglected as a critical factor behind climate change.
We hear that planting trees can offset carbon emissions, so tree planting has become a major tactic in tackling climate change. Though the trees we plant today will take over 100 years to absorb their potential in carbon.
Meanwhile Australia's mature forests - our massive carbon stores - are being logged at a startling rate. The Eden Woodchip Mill is a major culprit, consuming 2,500 trees every single day.
Protecting the integrity of our forests is a significant
and timely solution to climate change.
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6 Ways Woodchipping
Causes
Climate Change:
1) Soil Disturbance
Forests are valuable as carbon sinks because plants are made from carbon that they've absorbed from the air. The soil is created from centuries of rotted plant matter and contains over half of the carbon in a forest. Logging churns and compacts the soil, releasing stored gases, and quickening its breakdown when it's exposed to oxygen.
2) The Logging Burn
The logs removed from a forest account for about 18% of the forest's carbon. This leaves 82% of the carbon remaining in dead plants, unwanted trees, branches, stumps, roots and in the soil. This 'waste' is left to dry then set alight. Enormous quantities of carbon are released. With a logging burn even burning the carbon out of the soil. The Eden Woodchip Mill uses around 18,000 hectares of native forest a year. With estimates ranging from 500 to 1000 tonnes of CO2 released per hectare of logging, this accounts for over 10 million tonnes of greenhouse pollution annually.
3) The Log Trucks
The Woodchip Mill is fed on forests from across South East NSW and East Gippsland. This means logtrucks are driving thousands of kilometres each day. It's estimated that logtrucks servicing the Eden Chip Mill cover 14.5 million km's a year, producing around 2 million tonnes of greenhouse pollution.
4) Electricity Consumption
The Eden Mill shreds up to 3,000 logs a day, turning solid timber into woodchips. Powered by mains electricity, the Mill requires its own high capacity power lines that run from Canberra. The carbon pollution from this factor is unknown.
5) The Tanker Ships
The Mill exports around 1 million tonnes of woodchips annually, shipped to Japan in tanker loads of 30 to 40,000 tonnes. Sea freight is a fairly energy efficient form of transport, yet would still produce 4,000 tonnes of greenhouse pollution per circuit. Adding another 110,000 tonnes of carbon pollution.
6) Paper Rotting
All of the logs entering the Eden Mill are woodchipped for the Japanese pulp mills that make paper products. Its estimated that paper products last only 2 or 3 years before disposal and breakdown. And the carbon is released back into the atmosphere as greenhouse gases.
Logging Burn vs Bushfire
When a bushfire strikes most of the trees and other vegetation are still living so their moisture offers them protection from burning too severely. A bushfire generally burns upward to the branches and leaves. Many trees and plants survive, with just their trunks being singed, so the forest is able naturally regenerate afterward.
But with a logging burn the 'waste' is left on the ground to dry a few months before it is set alight. The logging burn is generally lit in the shape of a large ring that burns toward its centre. So the fire has a greater intensity and burns more deeply into the ground. Whereas a bushfire generally moves across the landscape in one direction.
A wombat, for example, can survive a bushfire by taking refuge underground. But during a logging burn survival underground is unlikely. The intensity is reflected in carbon loss per hectare. With logging producing up to 1000 tonnes of carbon pollution per hectare. Bushfires are only responsible for a fraction of that amount, dependent on intensity.
But Don't New Trees Grow ?
After the logging burn some trees grow back, but they would take another 150 years to do their job
as carbon stores. So their carbon re-capture is far too slow. And even if it was allowed to mature, the regrowth from logging would still only contain 60% of the carbon of the original forest.
The soil especially is found to have lost much of its carbon. So even once it's established the regrowth still lacks much of the carbon lost from logging. And the government plans to allow logging again in the same areas in just 30 years. So another wave of carbon loss would occur. This pattern of carbon loss and failure to re-capture it, makes woodchipping in native forests a massive climate negative.
