US-China ties boost climate actions

Years of cooperation between Oregon, United States, and its sister states in China have inspired both sides to exchange information and share projects to advance their climate actions.

"We are one planet and the actions taken or not taken by one jurisdiction inevitably affect the other," Oregon State Senator Michael Dembrow said at a conference held at Fuzhou in China's Fujian province. "Global climate action must entail both friendly competition and also productive partnerships."

Dembrow attended the 3rd China-Oregon Forum on Climate Change and Sustainability during his visit to Fujian on a goodwill mission. The forum, which was livestreamed for the US audience, brought officials and researchers together from Oregon and its sister states - Fujian province and Tianjin municipality - to explore knowledge and share practices in fighting biodiversity loss and climate crisis.

One of the forum highlights was signing an agreement between Crater Lake National Park in Oregon and Wuyishan National Park in Fujian. The agreement was inspired by the 2023 conference that placed importance on national park conservation in both countries.

"This is a trend that will continue particularly as we move forward from the COVID pandemic [period]," said Dembrow.

Crater Lake National Park in Oregon and Wuyishan National Park in Fujian established a relationship seven years ago. "This is a proud accomplishment that I hope will be carried along into the future based on mutual friendship and respect. There is much that we can learn from each other about honoring our heritage," said Craig Ackerman, superintendent of Crater Lake National Park.

Ackerman said national parks and protected areas are unique lands in both countries and they can serve as an early warning system to threats from climbing temperatures, drought, and other environmental conditions.

For example, climate change-driven impacts from white pine blister rust and infestations of mountain pine beetles are devastating forests throughout the Cascades and Rocky Mountains of the United States, and research is being conducted at Crater Lake on identifying and cloning DNA-resistant species of white bark pine, Ackerman said.

He also said research and mitigation efforts will be shared and that impacts from increasing pressure of public visitation in vulnerable areas is also being investigated in cooperation with other countries, including China.

Under the agreement with Wuyishan, "we will seek to encourage exchanges between concerned land managers in China and Oregon … and strive to engage universities and professionals to collaborate on research," he added.

Another research project is the study of forest fires by the faculties at Oregon State University and Fujian Agriculture and Forestry University.

Wang Yuzhe, an associate professor at Fujian Agriculture and Forestry University, will travel to Oregon later this month to work with Thomas DeLuca, dean of the College of Forestry at Oregon State University, as a visiting scholar for a year.

They have worked together in China before and this time their study will be the HJ Andrews Experimental Forest, an ecological research site in Oregon, said Wang.

"We will work together to study both recurrent fire as well as varied fire severity on the forest and the Bedrock Fire which occurred on federal forest land," said DeLuca, who attended the conference virtually.

"Climate change is increasing the size and frequency of fires in the United States and abroad. And this is resulting in the increasing consumption of fuels in the form of trees and shrubs and ground fuels. A portion of these fuels are converted into pyrogenic carbon or charcoal, which has a very long-lived life in soil," he explained.

Charcoal would last in soil for hundreds to thousands of years as opposed to wood which would last only tens to hundreds of years at the most, he said.

With the increase in fuel consumption, there appears to be increasing generation of pyrogenic carbon, but it's not clear how the severity and the recurrence of fires alter pyrogenic carbon accumulation in soils, DeLuca said. This is the focus of their study.

Other attendees also shared their practices, for example, an official of a community renewable energy association in Oregon shared small-scale and community-based energy projects; a professor at Nankai University shared China's development of carbon-free power.

"We on this delegation know that China is committed to taking serious action to combat climate change," said Dembrow, who chaired the Oregon Senate's Environment and Natural Resources Policy Committee for years. "[We on] this delegation look forward to bringing home to the United States examples of the actions that China is taking preserve its environment and address climate change," he said.