Grasslands, Kelp > Trees: my parking lot of helpful threads and papers

I've now twice had to go rummaging around on Twitter for these helpful threads and links to help me back up a claim that trees are not a good global panacea for climate change. Today yet another person in my friend circle saw a scary climate change article (in her case right after reading about how mass genocide of Native peoples led to afforestation and global cooling in the 15-16th c.) and responded with "plant trees!" So I had to go spam her with links. And then realized, oh, this seems to be a recurring event.

Welcome to my parking lot of helpful threads and papers to support the idea that grasslands and other non-tree carbon sinks like kelp forests are better than trees for slowing climate change.

Native grassland/prairie restoration project by CAFNR, U Missouri (CC BY-NC 2.0) 

~A paper out of UC Davis last year:

Grasslands More Reliable Carbon Sink Than Trees: In Wildfire-Prone California, Grasslands a Less Vulnerable Carbon Offset Than Forests - Article by Kat Kerlin (July 9, 2018, UC Davis), describing the findings published in this paper:

Grasslands may be more reliable carbon sinks than forests in California (2018) by Pawlok Dass (UC Davis) et al. Environmental Research Letters. 

- And it doesn't appear to be behind a paywall! 

~December 2018 Twitter threads by crop scientist Dr. Sarah Taber:

Dec. 10, 2018: Responding to a question about the carbon footprint of pasture-raised burgers, and then going on a wonderful GIF-rich rant about the cultural biases behind tree-centric climate change/land management research and policy. Excerpt:

The other thing is that "How much carbon can we lock up in trees?" is a lot better researched than "How much carbon can we lock up in grasslands?"

Because northwest European land management is more about forests than grasslands, so that's where rich countries' grant $ goes.

Dec. 11, 2018: Thread about "blue carbon" and the potential of kelp forests to act as carbon sinks. Excerpt:

Most importantly- unlike trees that can burn in wildfires or grasslands that can be plowed up, carbon locked in the deep ocean is not prone to any known human or natural interference. It's the most secure place we know of to sequester carbon.

~Around the same time, on Dec. 9, 2018, a grassland scientist Tweeting as Pastures Politic responded to someone posting "Spoiler alert: it's trees," referring to the Scientific American article "The Best Technology for Fighting Climate Change Isn't a Technology" (Dec. 5, 2018), with "NOPE. It's grasslands. Trees are dorks who put loads of their carbon aboveground." Here's the helpful thread supporting that nope.

After the "trees are dorks" comment, my favorite quote in that thread, by a plant scientist I follow on Twitter, posting as Itati Vasquez Chavez Santamaria:

Savannas and grasslands are basically underground forests which regenerate their top layer content due to fire and grazing. 

(See original Tweet)

~I first got hip to the importance of native perennial grasses in carbon sequestration and soil water retention hearing presentations by Wendell Gilgert, Working Lands Program Director at Point Blue. He was talking about some remarkable rangeland restoration projects he's done (the projects are now collectively called the Point Blue Rangeland Monitoring Network, I think). He left the impression on me that California could turn its water problems around across the state if these native perennial grass pilot projects could be scaled up.

There are a whole lot of interesting articles and threads out there discussing the importance of nomadic herding and pastoralist culture to maintenance of healthy grasslands, but I'll save those for another future parking lot post.