Forests have been embraced as a natural climate solution, due to their ability to soak up carbon dioxide from the atmosphere as they grow, locking it up in their trunks, branches, leaves, and roots.
Forests have been embraced as a natural climate solution, due to their ability to soak up carbon dioxide from the atmosphere as they grow, locking it up in their trunks, branches, leaves, and roots. But a new study confirms widespread doubts about the potential for most forests in the Western US to help curb climate change.
Published in Earth’s Future, the paper analyzed trends in carbon storage across the American West from 2005 to 2019. Led by Jazlynn Hall, a forest and landscape ecologist at Cary Institute of Ecosystem Studies, the team found that throughout most of the region, climate change and fires may be causing forests to store less carbon, not more.
“There’s a lot of momentum to use forests as natural climate solutions,” said Hall. “Many climate mitigation pathways rely in part on additional forest carbon storage to keep warming below 1.5 degrees C this century. We wanted to provide a baseline for how much carbon is currently stored in Western forests, how it’s changing, and how disturbances like fire and drought pose a threat to climate mitigation targets.”
Read more at Cary Institute of Ecosystem Studies
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