Having a solid estimate of the amount of carbon that forests can pull from the atmosphere is essential for global accounting of climate change — leaders are counting on forests to pull a good chunk of human-produced carbon back to earth. But in reality, forests’ ability to sequester carbon isn’t as straightforward as it might appear on paper. In a new research synthesis, Justin DeRose from the Department of Wildland Resources and colleagues across North America offered an alternative strategy to counter the uncertainty of calculating the carbon that forests can sequester, using tree ring data from forest inventory plots.
Oceans, soils and forests are “carbon sinks” — they have the ability to pull more carbon from the atmosphere than they put into it. Countries around the world depend on carbon sinks in their tally for achieving net-zero emissions. But the complex and delicate ecology of these systems are still somewhat unpredictable. Questions remain about how exactly forests will respond to the changing climate, and how to calculate what forests can do to help balance carbon accounts.
The global total for carbon pulled from the atmosphere by carbon sinks is traditionally estimated indirectly, by figuring the difference between human-produced emissions, the amount of carbon in the world’s oceans and the level of atmospheric concentrations of CO2. Supplementing that indirect calculation with data from existing (and future) collections of tree rings could provide an on-the-ground, direct record of the carbon gained by individual trees and forests, with the specificity of an annual time stamp, DeRose said. And from there, researchers could scale up to estimate forest-wide and continent-wide carbon savings.
Read more at: Utah State University
Forests around the world have the capacity to pull carbon out of the atmosphere to battle global climate change. But how much carbon they actually absorb is a question that still needs answering, and tree ring data can help, according to a new research synthesis from Justin DeRose. (Photo Credit: James St. John/Flickr.com/jsjgeology)