Subject: boreal forests

From: Lori Ann Baldwin <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 15 Jun 1995 12:28:49 -0700 (PDT)

The boreal forests - the forests of the far North - make up the
world's largest terrestrail ecosystem and have become the world's main
source of industrial wood and wood fiber. Covering 11 percent of the
earth's surface and including almost a third of the world's forests,
the boreal forests form a belt that encircles the North Pole.
They cover much of Alaska, Canda, Scandinavia, and northern Russia-
more than 70 percent of the forests are Russian. The landscape
consists of vast stands of conifers, aspen and birch. Occasionally,
the forest gives way to peatbogs, which cover about a fifth of the region.
The winters are long and bitterly cold, with temperatures dropping
to minus 40 degrees Celsious; the summers are brief. Much of the region
is underlain by permafrost-a subsoil that never thaws.
The forest itself is usually dominated by relatively few tree species. In
eastern Canada, black spruce, whtie spruce, and balsam fir cover 
thousands of hectares. In central Siberia, there are vast tracts of larch.
Broadleaf trees like birch, aspen, poplar, and alder appear in the
southern areas and as pioneers of distrubed sites.
 In global terms, one of the most significant aspects of the boreal ecosystem
may be the enormous amount of carbon that it stores. Carbon is the basic
building block of the heat-trapping "green house gases" implicated in
global warming. The region is estimated to contain about 709 billion
tons of carbon, equivalent to all the carbon held in all proven fossil
fuel reserves. Currently, the boreal forests are a "net carbon sink"-
their growth absorbs more carbon than they release through decay. Their 
current net intake
appears to be about 700 million tons per year, roughly equal to China's 
annual carbon emissions. But that intake will almost certainly drop if
logging continues at its present rate.

Here are some organizations working on boreal issues:
Taiga Rescue Network, Box 116, S-962 23 JokkMokk, Sweden
Western Canada Wilderness Committee, #4, 10121 Whyte Ave, Edmonton
ALB t6E 1Z5 Canada
Alaska Boreal Foest Council, 1707 Red Fox DRive, Fairbanks, AK 99079