Inaugural lesson
Do forests cool the Earth?
Monday, May 7, 2018 at 17:30
Auditorium A.03 place des Sciences 2, Louvain-la-Neuve
Tuesday, May 8, 2018
11:15 Observing changes in land surface properties and the exchange of carbon, water and energy at the land-atmosphere interface
12:45 Exchanges with PhD students and researchers
14:00 Modeling changes in land surface properties and the exchange of carbon, water and energy at the land-atmosphere interface
Auditorium BARB 02 place Sainte-Barbe 1, Louvain-la-Neuve
Wednesday, May 9, 2018
11:45 Fluxes and pools of the European GHG-cycles
12:45 Exchanges with PhD students and researchers
14:00 The carbon budget of forest management
15:00 The energy budget of land management
Auditorium BARB 02 place Sainte-Barbe 1, Louvain-la-Neuve
Thursday, May 10, 2018
11:45 The climate effect of forest management
14:00 Forest, forest, forest. What about other land management strategies and where are the humans?
Auditorium BARB 02 place Sainte-Barbe 1, Louvain-la-Neuve
Registration highly desired before April 26, 2018
Reception offered to all registered participants to the inaugural lesson
Light lunch offered to all registered participants to the tuesday and wednesday
Contact Person : Livia Lai 010 47 26 46 livia.lai@uclouvain.be
Parking Rédimé on the MAP
Abstracts of the lectures:
The series of lectures starts with an inaugural lecture highlighting the latest advances towards answering the question whether forests cool or warm the Earth. The subsequent lectures will detail the observational methods, the mathematical models, the underlying biogeochemistry and environmental physics required to understand the climate effects of forests and forest management. In the final lectures I will broaden the perspective and explore the climate effects of land management in general and the role of humans. Whereas the series of lectures is set-up as an intensive course, each lecture will stand alone and can be attended as such. The planning includes time for informal discussions.
Do forests cool the Earth? – 1h (Day 1)
Forests, of which globally 70% are managed, play a particularly important role in the global carbon cycle. Recently, forest management became a top priority on the agenda of the political negotiations to mitigate climate change because forest plantations may remove atmospheric CO2 and if used for energy production, the wood is a substitute for fossil fuel. However, this political imperative is at present running well ahead of the science required to deliver it. In this series of lectures I want to challenge the current focus on the carbon cycle and replace it with a total climate impact approach. All things considered, do forest really cool the Earth?
Fluxes and pools of the European GHG-cycles – 1h (Day 3)
Globally, terrestrial ecosystems have absorbed about 30% of anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions over the period 2000–2007 and inter-hemispheric gradients indicate that a significant fraction of terrestrial carbon sequestration must be north of the Equator. There is much scientific and political interest in using the transfer of C from the atmosphere to the biosphere (fluxes), or carbon sequestration (pools), to help mitigate the greenhouse effect. In this lecture I will present the major components of the CO2, CO, CH4 and N2O budgets of Europe and discuss the net contribution of terrestrial ecosystems to the European GHG budget.
The carbon budget of forest management – 1h (Day 3)
The optimal forest management strategies for mitigating climate change are hotly debated during political negotiations, because afforestation and forest management can increase atmospheric CO2 removal, and the wood produced can provide a substitute for fossil fuel. This lecture will add details to lecture 1 in evaluating the interactions between forest management - e.g., conservation, thinning and felling, and coppicing - and carbon sequestration at present and under future environmental conditions.
The energy budget of land management – 1h (Day 3)
Whenever a plant takes up CO2 from the atmosphere, water is lost to the atmosphere (transpiration), and energy gets reflected, absorbed and transmitted. Furthermore, the physical presence of vegetation alters the air flow which in turn affects the CO2 uptake and transpiration. Vegetation-based efforts to mitigate climate change through carbon sequestration come with an unintended climatic cost or benefit through the energy budget of the plant. This lecture will introduce the major biophysical pathways of how plants affect the atmospheric temperature.
The climate effect of forest management – 1h (Day 4)
The Kyoto Protocol as well as the Paris Agreement are carbon-centric and assume that irrespective of how the emission of a molecule of CO2 is prevented or compensated for, there will be a climate benefit. Where this assumption is mostly true for reducing fossil emissions, assessing the climate effects of forest management requires more nuance. This lecture will add details to lecture 1 in evaluating and builds on the biogeochemical and biophysical aspects presented in lectures 5 and 6 to present the latest insights in how forest management affect the European climate.
Forest, forest, forest. What about other land management strategies and where are the humans? – 2h (Day 4)
In the light of daunting global sustainability challenges such as climate change, biodiversity loss and food security, improving our understanding of the complex dynamics of the Earth system is crucial. However, large knowledge gaps related to the effects of land management persist, in particular those human-induced changes in terrestrial ecosystems that do not result in land-cover conversions. In this lecture I will present the current state of knowledge of common land management activities such as fertilization, grazing, and drainage to mention a few, for their biogeochemical and biophysical impacts, and the level of process understanding. Furthermore, climate change is a human-caused problem but the tools to study its effects on humans largely ignores the response of humans. Do humans deserve a place in physical and applied life sciences?
