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Push to close Australia's native timber industry to 'save' forest carbon based on flawed science

By Mark Poynter - posted Monday, 17 November 2014


In a media release last week, the Australian National University (ANU) announced that "in partnership with information and communication technologists at Fujitsu Laboratories in Japan", its researchers had found that "protecting native forests by ending logging could double the amount of carbon stored in trees", and that "avoiding emissions from logging native forests is important to help fight climate change".

The ANU media release went on to explain that the findings were drawn from research undertaken in the mountain ash forests of Victoria's Central Highlands in which a new national park – the Great Forests National Park – has been proposed by 'the community'. Furthermore, it announced that two research papers proposing new strategies to manage native forests would be presented at the IUCN's World Parks Congress due to start the following day in Sydney.

On the same day, a media release from Fujitsu Laboratories about this new research explained how the Japanese company applied its Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) technology "to quantitively assess changes in the forest's carbon stock". According to Fujitsu, "the new research has found innovative new methods of sustainably managing native forests ...... that keeps volumes of atmospheric CO2 in check and that work for the protection of endangered species"

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Fujitsu went on to explain that it had simulated and analysed changes to the forest carbon stock caused by natural wildfires compared to human use for wood production. Their media release included two diagrams - one purporting to show carbon flow associated with wood production; and the other comparing carbon stock volume under natural wildfire and wood production scenarios.

These two diagrams exhibit critical errors that stem from an earlier research paper by ANU conservation scientists – Keith et al, published in June 2014: Managing temperate forests for carbon storage: impacts of logging versus forest protection on carbon stocks, by Keith, Lindenmayer, Mackey, Blair, Carter, MacBurney, Okada, Konishi-Nagano, published by Ecosphere, ESA Online Journals Vol 5 Issue 6 Article 75.

That paper's lead author, Dr Heather Keith, is also named on the ANU media release as the contact for media interviews on this new joint ANU/Fujitsu research. This confirms that the errors contained in her paper, Keith et al (2014), are being repeated in this new joint research. They include:

A misconception that only 40% of the merchantable biomass of a clear-felled mountain ash forest in Victoria's Central Highlands is removed off-site (as usable logs).

This is an avoidable error which has arisen from the misquoting of a cited source reference. It is serious because it creates a false contention which becomes the basis for further errors.

Keith et al citedRaison and Squire (2007) as the source of this misconception. However, Table 4 (p.23) of Raison and Squire shows that in "Moist, high quality forests" clearfell harvested for sawlog and pulpwood, 40% of the 'harvested above-ground tree biomass' remains on-site as slash residue. Therefore 60% (not 40%) is being removed off-site as usable logs.

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Further to this, the Raison and Squire (2007) figure is an Australia-wide figure for a range of wet forest types and ages. However, in the Victorian Central Highlands ash forests studied by Keith et al, timber harvesting occurs almost exclusively in 75-year old advanced regrowth forests. According to the state's commercial forestry agency, VicForests, this harvesting produces substantially higher log recovery than that cited by Raison and Squire (2007), with off-site log removals often comprising 80 – 85% of the above-ground tree biomass.

Keith et al's substantial understating of the proportion of merchantable biomass removed off-site as logs has significantly adverse ramifications for its carbon accounting calculations. They have been based on significantly under-stated carbon storage in wood products, and substantially over-stated carbon emissions during slash residue burns.

A flawed determination that just 27% of the harvested log volume produced from these forests is sawlog used to produce sawn timber.

Keith et al have determined this figure from just one year's harvest sales records for the whole of Victoria, including from the full suite of forest types. Using the same methodology, VicForests' sales records over the past three-years show sawlog comprising a significantly higher average of 37% of statewide log production.

Furthermore, this statewide figure doesn't reflect the greater proportional sawlog production from the higher quality ash regrowth forests of the Central Highlands' study area.

According to VicForests, the sawlog proportion of all logs harvested from the study area's ash regrowth forests typically varies from 35 – 40%, but can be as high as 50%, depending on the forest quality in the particular harvesting coupe.

This error significantly understates how much harvested wood is actually made into solid timber products capable of long-term carbon storage.

An erroneous conclusion that sawn timber ultimately comprises only 4% of the total merchantable above-ground tree biomass of the harvested forest.

This is a consequence of the first two mistakes and grossly understates the reality.

If these mistakes are corrected to reflect the real situation, the sawn timber component is actually likely to be three or more times greater than the 4% figure used by Keith et al in their carbon accounting calculations.

A critically wrong assumption that mountain ash forests being used for wood production in Victoria's Central Highlands are being managed on a 50-year cycle of harvest and regeneration, rather than the reality of 80 years.

While Victoria's Timber Industry Strategy (2009) was cited as the source of this claim, a search of this document found that it contained no reference to a 50-year harvest rotation. In fact, it is well-known that VicForests are planning an 80-year rotation length for that proportion of Central Highlands mountain ash forests which is available for future use.

This is another significant error because it assumes that forest waste from future timber harvesting will be burnt and emit carbon at nearly twice the actual planned frequency.

Major over-stating of the area of Central Highlands' ash forest that is being annually harvested and regenerated.

Keith et al (2014) has based its carbon accounting on 20,600 ha of forest being harvested over the five years from 2011 – 16. This is around three times greater than the reality. Part of this period has already passed and the actually harvested areas for the first three years total 4,200 ha – in 2010/11 – 1600ha; 2011/12 – 1300ha; and 2012/2013 – 1300ha.

This error also has significant ramifications for the paper's findings because the estimated carbon stock has been modelled on a grossly inflated area.

Collectively, these quite fundamental errors have contributed to a highly flawed carbon accounting calculations that enabled Keith et al (2014) to grossly over-state the impact of timber production on supposedly exacerbating carbon emissions.

That these errors are being repeated in the new research undertaken by many of the same ANU researchers in conjunction with Fujitsu Laboratories, is evident in the two diagrams contained in the Fujitsu media release. One of these diagrams is a reproduction of Figure 8 from Keith et al, 2014 which contains the first three errors; with the other two incorporated in the second diagram.

A further potential misconception flagged in the Fujitsu media release is that all forest burnt by wildfire is presumed to be salvage logged when, in reality, the limitations of contractor capability and time before timber degrade ensures that the majority is not. This also has considerable potential to skew carbon accounting calculations.

Unfortunately over the past year, the factual errors outlined above have become part of the anti-logging lexicon by dint of being repeated by ANU ecologist David Lindenmayer (a co-author of Keith et al) on ABC Radio, in several newspaper articles, and at a Greens-sponsored 'extinction emergency' forum. In addition, they have been used in promotional material for a forests and climate change forum organised and sponsored by a number of forest and climate ENGOs, and used to support the push for a Great Forests National Park in Victoria's Central Highlands being mooted by ENGOs as the saviour of the endangered Leadbeater's Possum.

The errors in Keith et al (2014) raise important questions about the academic standards governing the ANU's forests conservation research program, including peer review and the public dissemination of research findings.

Peer review may be vaunted by the academic community as an unimpeachable guarantee that scientific evidence has been through a process of unbiased testing, but contrary to this idealistic expectation it can be readily biased by who the reviewers are and their professional, personal or political agendas; and/or the extent to which they actually know the topic and its wider context.

As Keith et al (2014) shows, it is folly to automatically accept peer review as a guarantee that the factual and conceptual accuracy of a research paper is beyond reproach. Clearly, it was reviewed by person/s unfamiliar with the paper's Victorian study area and the basic forestry data associated with it, and this is at the core of the paper's flaws.

It is noteworthy that ANU forests conservation research papers are being increasingly published in international online journals where peer review may not be as rigorous as was traditionally expected. Indeed, ESA Journals, which published Keith et al (2014), enables submitting authors to suggest their own peer reviewers from an international database of potential reviewers.

This may be an attraction of publishing in international online journals whereby peer review is more likely to be undertaken by scientists lacking sufficient background knowledge of the Australian context to meaningfully challenge the researchers' work. Sadly, this is a recipe for highly flawed science.

The major concern of how research findings with implications for the future of Australian forestry are being disseminated through the media is arguably of greater significance because of its potential to mislead the wider community and shape political decisions.

Keith et al (2014) and other forest conservation research papers produced by much the same cabal of ANU scientists since 2008, have created considerable consternation amongst forest scientists and forestry practitioners about a pre-conceived academic agenda. This has been inflamed by perceptions of inappropriate collusion between ENGOs and researchers zealously promoting draft findings at anti-forestry campaign events and through the media in support of ENGO agendas.

The power of sensational media headlines has long been recognised by environmental activists, and this seems to have been impressed upon some ANU conservation scientists to such a degree that loudly promoting their findings in a carefully-timed media blitz may be taking precedence over the integrity of their research. This may be due to a realisation that, even if the veracity of their research is questionable, by the time this is detected their findings have already been heavily promoted through the media and appropriated for use in ENGO campaigns and are shaping public opinion and political decision-making.

That the flawed findings drawn from Keith et al (2014) are underpinning the new joint ANU/Fujitsu Laboratories forest carbon research to be released with much fanfare to an international audience at the World Parks Congress, should be acutely embarrassing for both the ANU and Fujitsu. The Japanese company has every right to feel aggrieved as it partnered with the ANU researchers in good faith only to be let down by their lack of academic rigour.

In conclusion, advocating the closure of local timber industries to 'save' forests for carbon is inappropriate without any consideration of the implications of having to then replace Australian-grown hardwood with substitutes – either imported hardwoods, or non-wood materials such as steel or concrete – whose supply embodies substantially greater greenhouse emissions. These unintended consequences are yet to be considered by the ANU's various forest carbon papers.

It is also worth remembering that the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) in its 4th Assessment Report in 2007, acknowledged that: "In the long term, a sustainable forest management strategy aimed at maintaining or increasing forest carbon stocks, while producing an annual sustained yield of timber, fibre or energy from the forest, will generate the largest sustained (carbon) mitigation benefit."

Victoria's Central Highlands' ash forests – seemingly the epicentre of ANU forest carbon research – already meets this ideal with around 70% of its area contained in parks and reserves that are growing carbon and conserving environmental values; while the other 30% hosts renewable timber and fibre production while also supporting carbon sequestration and conservation values.

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About the Author

Mark Poynter is a professional forester with 40 years experience. He is a Fellow of the Institute of Foresters of Australia and his book Going Green: Forests, fire, and a flawed conservation culture, was published by Connor Court in July 2018.

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