Jai - I answered the question you wrote:
what would be the carbon footprint of falling and dragging, chipping and then processing to char, then grinding, shipping and then burying a forest that is almost 2 times the size of the nation of brazil?
I'm equally willing to answer your new questions, but I'd appreciate a response to the detailed answer to your last one, without which discussion is diminished.
You need first an understanding of the ancient and highly sustainable sylviculture of Coppice, which in preceding agriculture is arguably our oldest surviving sustainable industry.
Coppice consists of a woodland that is harvested cyclically and regrown from the stumps. For a coppice on a 10 year growth cycle there will be 10 plots felled in succession, meaning that there is one ready each year. The roots do not die so long as the cycle is less than ~35 years and browsers are not allowed to graze off the new growth, but instead they put out exceedingly vigorous growth owing to the massive root ball that develops. The rule of thumb is that from the second harvest onwards coppice grows 20% faster than normal cohort forestry. The trees thrive on this regime, with their biological clock being reset at each harvest, with the oldest known in Britain being a hazel near Ashford in Kent that was planted during the Roman occupation.
Coppice is never a clear-cut operation - cutting areas (coups) are limited to the traditional 1 to 3 acres and often smaller. Larger coups would allow more wind in slowing the start of the growth season and leading to lower humidity and soil moisture in summer, again slowing growth. The felling is done during the dormant season in temperate climes to increase the formation of new buds on the stump, though by contast in Burma the trees are cut when convenient and regrow just as well.
Extraction to a stack at the edge of the coup is normally done in winter in temperate climes to minimze plants' obstruction, but on wet sites is better done in summer when the ground is firmer. Haulage in the UK is normally by pony, though in many countries oxen are used. This has advantages of tight manoeuvring, minimal ground disturbance, and when trained of being self-guided between somebody hitching bundles of logs out on the coup and somebody unhitching and building the stack. Tractors are unhelpful for extraction as their ground pressure affects the trees' roots and has been shown to slow growth rates. A timber bob or 'pair of wheels' can be used to avoid logs scraping the ground which adds to haulage load.
An interesting aspect of native coppice forestry is that it accomodates exceptional biodiversity - the highest of any ecosystem in Europe - and I know of no reason against this being the case elsewhere. It does so due to the "ecological edge effect" where year by year the light enters onto a new patch of the woodland floor and then gradually declines as the trees grow during the felling cycle. This generates unique floral and fungal inventories which attract corresponding insect and bird communities plus every mammal, amphibian and reptile that can get a living from the result, including carnivores where they are respected.
So in answer to your questions:
When you chop down the trees, the roots die and decompose,In coppice forestry they do not; they can live for at least 1700 years.
in addition, you dry out the tropical soil and change rainfall patterns. No, coppice doesn't dry out tropical soils and change rainfall pattern, particularly when it is planted anew and so adds to total tree cover - as in the proposed program
not to mention biodiversity loss.A program of Native Coppice Afforestation in plots across 1.6GHa.s will provide an immense and world-changing boost to biodiversity, particularly where it is planted to buffer or rejoin isolated old-growth forest reserves.
I wonder if you have truly thought through this idea.I began thinking this idea through in its early formats back in the late 1980s, when I was first consulting to the UK govt on forestry issues. 25 years later I have thought this through in some detail.
Please consider the manpower, logisticsI've done so in close detail for project proposals but given the number of critical variables I'd say here that they depend largely upon local conditions and on inputs.
and environmental devastation such a scheme would entail.If it it entailed the slightest 'environmental devastation' I'd not be proposing it.
You are talking about clear cutting a significant fraction of the tropical forest belt. No, I'm talking about nothing of the sort. I'm talking of the feasibility and multiple critical benefits of a global program of Carbon Recovery for Food Security.
All the best,
Lewis