Hi, I'm Ranger Greg at Redwood National and State Parks
A lot of people have very different emotions
and experiences walking through these forests.
There's a real sense of wonder, peace, and excitement.
And there's no doubt these
skyscraper trees melt away problems and make egos greatly diminished.
But you might not be able to visit here in person but you can still ask yourself:
"What can a redwood tree do for you?"
OK, take a breath.
How's your air?
The life and death of these redwood trees might
have already helped you without you realizing.
We know that trees hold carbon
and they create oxygen. And carbon is getting a lot of attention around the world at the moment.
At Redwood and other national parks across the country a lot
of science is being done to learn about the role of carbon and climate change.
When carbon is released, it joins with oxygen in the atmosphere to create
carbon dioxide. That's the greenhouse gas.
It's a beautiful day at the beach today and
as you can imagine I'm feeling warmth from the Sun but there's also plenty of
infrared radiation bouncing off the landscape heading back towards the sky.
But infrared radiation, when it meets a greenhouse gas, is going to energize that
little molecule and that molecule will make heat. Greenhouse gases--they're vital
for life on our planet. Without them we wouldn't survive.
But it's interesting to look across the solar system, look at different planets
that have either a lot or a little
greenhouse gas.
The planet Venus has a thick atmosphere full of greenhouse gases. It gets so hot there,
lead could melt. Momma mia, that's a hot!
And on the other hand, you have Mars with a very
thin atmosphere and very few greenhouse gases. As a result, each evening it's
temperatures plummet to at least a hundred degrees below zero. Brrrrrrr!
At Redwood and other national parks across the country
plenty of science has been done to learn about climate change caused by huge
amounts of carbon dioxide being released into the atmosphere.
So I'm going to show you a number and it's a weight of something per acre found around me.
Could it be the weight of the wildlife? Maybe it's the weight of the trees?
It's none of those! It's actually the weight of something really tiny. That's how much
carbon per acre that's held in these ecosystems. There is no other forest in
the world that holds, or sequests this amount of carbon. Not the bush of New
Zealand, not the rain forests of the Amazon, and not the mangroves of Florida.
But it's the Redwoods that's the number one carbon sink per acre of any
ecosystem in the world.
When carbon is held in nature, it's called a carbon sink.
When it's released, it's called a carbon source. It's really easy to understand
the role and the simple math of carbon if we think about carbon as marbles.
Green marbles are carbon sinks, like the oceans, trees, soils, shells, and even parts
of your body and the black marbles represent carbon sources like volcanoes,
wildfires, decomposition, as well as humans burning fossil fuels.
Science is able to tell the difference between carbon
released from a volcano or a wildfire or an automobile.
Now if you visit, you might find some smoke or haze from wildfires.
Each year across the USA millions of tons of carbon are released from these fires, but
keep in mind those emissions are just a fraction of the carbon dioxide emitted
by automobiles during the same year.
This is the amount of carbon held in carbon sinks across the world for one year.
Six billion tons. [Sound of marbles in glass bowl]
This is the amount of carbon released each year from forest
fires, volcanoes, and deforestation. And science can show us that another eight
billion is released the burning of fossil fuels and motor vehicles and
power plants.
You can see and hear that difference.
So the math is really easy:
there's an imbalance each year between the amount of carbon that can be
absorbed and the amount of carbon that is released. That four billion tons
extra each year going into the atmosphere is the fundamental
and basic cause of climate change.
So redwoods hold on to carbon for an incredibly long
period of time. They can live for a couple of thousand years and when they die they
decompose over centuries, that whole time they're holding or sequestering carbon.
It's been estimated that nineteen million tons of carbon are held within the trees
and the soils inside Redwood National and State Parks.
That's a very sizable number.
It's about the same amount of emissions that comes from four million
cars in one year. But keep in mind
95% of the old-growth redwoods have fallen to the axe and the chainsaw.
Take a moment to think about how much ahead of the game we would be if those old trees
were still standing.
So what good is a redwood tree? Take that breath. You might just discover for
yourself that an old growth redwood is good for the environment and good for the soul.