A current event in healthcare - Assignment Example

A current event in healthcare: Wildfires emit more greenhouse gases Grade (April 17, A current event in healthcare: Wildfires emit more greenhouse gasesThe effect of wildfires in carbon emissions is a recently environmental health studied phenomena, which has shown that wildfires emit more carbon to the atmosphere than previously anticipated. A study undertaken to establish the effect of wildfires in greenhouse gases emissions in California has indicated that the carbon stored and released in the California woodland forests is much higher than had previously been quantified (University of California, 2015).

The effect of this revelation is that it might be difficult for California to achieve the target 1990 carbon levels by 2020, due to the fact that the greenhouse emissions from the state’s woodlands was underestimated during the formulation of this target. The bill which was formulated in 2006 to have the state reduce its carbon emissions to 1990 levels by 2020 had previously assumed that no net carbon emissions would come from the wild lands (Gonzalez, Battles, Collins, Robards & Saah, 2015).

Achieving the balance between the storage of carbon and its emissions to the atmosphere is normally a difficult challenge. This is because, through growing vegetation, carbon is removed from the atmosphere. This in turn serves to reduce any incidence of climate change naturally. On the other hand, burned or dead and decaying vegetation releases carbon to the atmosphere. This in turn increases the incidence of climate change (University of California, 2015). Therefore, the fact that the wild lands will always have decaying vegetation at any one particular time means that incidences of carbon emissions from the wild lands shall continue.

Further, the dead and dried vegetation acts as fuel for wildfires, which when it burns the vegetation, releases a huge quantity of greenhouse gases to the atmosphere. Thus, the recent research seeking to quantify the amount of carbon gas emission that results from California’s wild land ecosystem has indicated that its forests has the potential of releasing a huge amount of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere. The forests acts as huge carbon reservoirs, and it was estimated that the quantity of carbon reservoir in the California’s forest is to the tune of 850 million tons (Gonzalez, Battles, Collins, Robards & Saah, 2015).

Most especially, certain types of trees and vegetations were found to be the major reservoirs of carbon. For example, the redwood forests that is near California’s Redwood National Park was found to hold more carbon reservoirs on the ground per hectare, compared to any other ecosystem globally (Gonzalez, Battles, Collins, Robards & Saah, 2015). Therefore, while the estimation of the net emissions from the California’s wild land ecosystem had been zero during the formulation of the carbon emission reduction targets in 2006, the carbon emission quantifying research has indicated that between 2001 and 2010, the California state’s wild land and vegetation had released approximately 69 tones of greenhouse gases to the atmosphere (Gonzalez, Battles, Collins, Robards & Saah, 2015).

This is a certainly huge greenhouse gas emission within a period of ten years. This therefore means that the target carbon emission from the other areas of the state’s carbon emission can be reduced to the targeted levels, but the wild land and vegetation ecosystem will definitely hinder the achievement of the target carbon emission levels. This then leads to the question; do the forests, wild land and vegetation ecosystems help reduce or contribute to climate change and global warming? ReferencesGonzalez, P.

, Battles, J., Collins, B., Robards, T. & Saah, D. (2015). Aboveground live carbon stock changes of California wildland ecosystems, 2001–2010. Forest Ecology and Management, 348-68. University of California - Berkeley. (2015, April 16). Wildfires emit more greenhouse gases than assumed in California climate targets. ScienceDaily. Retrieved April 17, 2015 from www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2015/04/150416094049.htm