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The unique efficiencies of the Australian floodplains and their capacity to mitigate local climate and sequester carbon dioxide By Jan Pokorný and Wilhelm Ripl Large areas of the Australian continent have been subject to intense grazing, clearing, drainage and to traditional, authorised and unauthorised burning. The result of these activities has been a reduction in BOTH living and dead biomass and aridisation or desertification. The Australian landscape has a HUGE capacity to sequestrate carbon dioxide into plant biomass very quickly. And any increase in plant biomass brings about the following positive synergistic effects: · Improvement of the DAILY water cycle (water recycling as ‘dew’ and mitigation of local climate) · An increase in agricultural production · Sequestration of carbon into biomass · Prevention of erosion · Increase in biodiversity The Natural Sequence Farming (NSF) methods developed by Peter Andrews has been applied to a scale of tens km2 on numerous farms in the last 3 decades. The NSF system is based on the stimulation of plant growth by the management of the local water cycle-retention of water in the landscape and the restoration of acquifers. The subsequent increase in plant production and the increase in biodiversity has been proven in every case. To illustrate the above statement: an increase in primary production of 0.1kg of plant biomass (dry mass) per m2 annually represents sequestration of 0.145kg of carbon dioxide (or 0.04 kg of carbon). Living biomass retains water and also recycles water via transpiration. There is a powerful effect that living biomass has on climate which can be both felt and measured- plants evaporate water and by doing so produce a cooling effect. An increase of evaporation of about 1 litre represents an air conditioning effect of 0.7kWh. Put more simply one willow tree has a cooling effect per day equivalent to 28 reverse cycle air conditioners. To put it more scientifically, an increase in evapo-transpiration of 1m2 per day represents a locally cooling effect of between 50-100 W. The large floodplains of Australia a have great natural potential to increase plant production and accumulate biomass. The storage of plant biomass can be achieved by water management under NSF techniques. Under this regime it has the potential to accumulate an amazing 145 metric tonnes of CO2 per 1km2. Using the unique EFFICIENCES of the Australian floodplains, there is an tremendous opportunity to accumulate vast quantities of plant biomass very quickly, which can sequester much atmospheric CO2. On top of this, the increase in plant production and the accumulation of organic material (carbon) in soil will bring all of the aforementioned synergistic positive effects and show the way to achieving the sustainable management of our now eroding landscape. Addendum The sequestration of carbon has not been shown in nature to mitigate global warming and climate change. Far more involved in climate change is the overheating of the landscape due to the lack of evaporable water and cooling strategies due to live processes. The safest and most effective measures to combat climate change and global warming is in vegetative cover, thereby, reintroducing the water cycling and cooling capacity of living plants. The primary cooling caused by evapo-transpiration, from vegetation, will strengthen the land-sea balance in Australia i.e., the cooling of the landscape by vegetation will bring more rain back to the landscape. There is NO other process of carbon sequestration which could improve the net water flow from the sea to the landscape than by the implementation of evaporating plants /trees vegetation. We both agree that this way could be a tedious process, however, the uniqueness in the efficiency of Australia’s floodplain systems shows it seems to be the only feasible and realistic way to improve water circulation, to dampen or cool the thermodynamics of the atmosphere and to localise the water climate and matter-flow processes. NSF, therefore, is the most superior stabilisation process for climate and sustainable development in the Australian landscape. Peter Andrews has put forward a method we believe is the ONLY way out of a national and world disaster. The sequestration of carbon is the subalternate effect of improving the superior water cycle process and hence the vegetative cover. THERE IS NO INDICATION THAT ONLY CARBON SEQUESTRATION, WITHOUT REPAIRING THE WATER BALANCE, RESTORING VEGETATION AND MATTER-FLOW PROCESSES, COULD IN ITSELF, LEAD TO THE MITIGATION OF CLIMATE CHANGE. JP and WR March 26th 2008 |
