A new University of Maryland-led study by an international team of scientists paints a vivid image of how forests developed over centuries and contribute to Earth’s carbon balance—a crucial component to maintaining a steady global climate.
A new University of Maryland-led study by an international team of scientists paints a vivid image of how forests developed over centuries and contribute to Earth’s carbon balance—a crucial component to maintaining a steady global climate.
The study led by Postdoctoral Associate Ann Raiho of the Earth System Science Interdisciplinary Center (ESSIC) reconstructed the natural pace and pattern of carbon storage in forests of the Midwestern United States over millennia. Published today in the journal Science, the findings have the potential to shift ongoing debates about how landscapes can be managed to maximize carbon storage while meeting conservation goals.
Plants breathe in carbon from the atmosphere and store it in their leaves, branches, trunks and roots. While this “woody biomass” contains one of the largest pools of terrestrial carbon, changes in the magnitude of woody biomass over millennia are poorly known, with most direct observations of vegetation biomass spanning no more than a few decades.
Because trees grow very slowly, this lack of data leads to a substantial knowledge gap. In the absence of empirical data, scientists make assumptions that lead to uncertainties about long-term carbon sink and projections of the future carbon-climate system.
Read more at University of Maryland
Image: Old-growth forests, such as these hemlock trees from Michigan, play important roles in carbon storage yet are declining dramatically, according to new research from the Earth System Science Interdisciplinary Center. (Photo by Jody Peters)
