Colorado’s forests store a massive amount of carbon, but dying trees—mostly due to insects and disease—have caused the state’s forests to emit more carbon than they absorbed in recent years, according to a Colorado State Forest Service report.
Insects and disease—most notably, bark beetle outbreaks—affected more forest than wildfire, harvest and weather combined during the study period. Insects and disease were responsible for 85% of the total area impacted by disturbances and 64% of disturbance-related carbon losses.
“People are looking to our natural ecosystems to mitigate climate change,” said Tony Vorster, lead author of the report and a research scientist with the Natural Resource Ecology Laboratory. “We shouldn’t necessarily look to our forests to offset emissions because they’re currently a net carbon source across the state as a whole, and that trend is probably going to continue with ongoing droughts and wildfires.”
“We’re not going to plant our way out of this, but reforestation is a strategy that can be used to reduce the loss of forest and to mitigate some of these carbon losses,” Vorster said.
Vorster said that future reports will show Colorado’s forests are an even greater source of carbon because of recent severe wildfires that were not accounted for in the report released Jan. 9, which covers 2002-2019.