SciWorks Radio recently interviewed Dr. Sam Davis, Research Director with our allies at Dogwood Alliance in Asheville, NC. Dogwood is dedicated to protecting the environmental and economic value of Southern forests.

Dr. Davis discussed a number of important matters related to the important of protecting forests:

I can’t emphasize enough that our trees are really our best fight against climate change and we need to revalue them as essential parts of this community, this global community that we live in. If we let trees do their job, climate change would not be a problem, if we had enough trees and we let them get big enough, and maybe we cut back a bit on the SUVs … just a little bit.

The topic of using trees to create biofuels and wood pellets was also discussed.

An individual tree can absorb about 13 pounds of carbon a year. When you cut a tree, you are taking the ability of that tree to store carbon away for the future. When you cut for wood pellets, those pellets are getting burned, which releases all of the carbon back into the atmosphere; carbon that may have been stored and protected from the atmosphere for a hundred years.

SciWorks Radio is a production of 88.5 WFDD and SciWorks, the Science Center and Environmental Park of Forsyth County, located in Winston-Salem, NC. Listen to the interview here.