When people talk about ways to slow climate change, they often mention trees, and for good reason. Forests take up a large amount of the planet-warming carbon dioxide that people put into the atmosphere when they burn fossil fuels. But will trees keep up that pace as global temperatures rise? With companies increasingly investing in forests as offsets, saying it cancels out their continuing greenhouse gas emissions, that’s a multibillion-dollar question.
The results of two studies published in the journals Science and Ecology Letters on May 12, 2022 – one focused on growth, the other on death – raise new questions about how much the world can rely on forests to store increasing amounts of carbon in a warming future. Ecologist William Anderegg, who was involved in both studies, explains why.
