Trees are amazing. This completely natural resource creates oxygen and absorbs carbon dioxide, can be used to make paper, to furnish our houses, and provides habitats for insects and animals too.
However, when they’ve been cut down or otherwise destroyed, trees actually present a bit of a problem for the climate, due to the massive amounts of carbon that they then release into the atmosphere.
Until now, this has presented a bit of a headache for climate scientists.
But now scientists from the University of Maryland have found that old logs and trees could be used to fight climate change, even after they’ve been cut down.
And how have they done this?
Through analysing a 3,775 year old log to learn more about a technique, newly being used to fight climate change, called ‘wood vaulting’.
In a study recently published in the academic journal Science, lead author Professor Ning Zeng explained that the almost 4,000 year old log had been buried underneath clay soil. This inadvertent factor had prevented the log from breaking down, so the majority of the carbon that it had absorbed in its lifetime was still contained within it.
In fact, less than 5% of the carbon had been lost, meaning that the log was still sturdy, intact, and – importantly – not damaging to the environment, as Zeng described in a statement:
“The wood is nice and solid—you could probably make a piece of furniture out of it.”
Why is this significant? Because there is a lot of wood that goes to waste in the world, and the very nature of wood means that it captures carbon during its lifetime. This is a great thing, as it protects our atmosphere. However, as old wood breaks down, this carbon is released.
Since we live in such a commercially focused world, this does not just affect wood that has been destroyed by natural causes like forest fires or disease, as would have been the case in the past. Nowadays, so much wood is wasted through old furniture, construction materials, and waste wood from other human processes.
All of this waste wood means much more carbon being released into the atmosphere.
‘Wood vaulting’, the idea of burying waste wood to prevent its carbon being released. But, as Zeng and his team have discovered, you can’t just bury the wood in any old soil:
“People tend to think, ‘Who doesn’t know how to dig a hole and bury some wood?’ But think about how many wooden coffins were buried in human history. How many of them survived? For a timescale of hundreds or thousands of years, we need the right conditions.”
Identifying those right conditions has been a tricky business.
However, the discovery of the log, and the subsequent carbon dating process that proved it was 3,775 years old, has given research into wood vaulting the boost it needed.
After realising that it had lost so little of its carbon, the team identified the soil that the log had been discovered in, in a trench in Quebec. This clay-based soil, they realised, was the reason that the wood had been so well maintained, as the statement explains:
“The type of soil covering the log was the key reason for its remarkable preservation. The clay soil in that part of Quebec had an especially low permeability, meaning that it prevented or drastically slowed oxygen from reaching the log while also keeping out fungi and insects, the decomposers typically found in soil.”
And how can this help our fight against climate change? Well, clay-based soil is almost as common across the world as waste wood is. Burying the waste wood is such a cheap and effective solution that it could soon be adopted worldwide.
This one measure could have a significant impact on how this one process affects the climate crisis.
Though this alone it is not enough to prevent the numerous tipping points that climate scientists warn of, it is something – and chipping away at the problem is surely better than inaction.
And as we unite in the fight against climate change, this 3,775 year old tree has pitched in to help.
If you thought that was interesting, you might like to read about why we should be worried about the leak in the bottom of the ocean.