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Quantifying the strength of the land carbon sink3 min read

by wpengine on July 26, 2023

Climate and Ecosystem Sciences Division Climate Sciences Department

This article first appeared at nature.berkeley.edu/news.

The world’s forests, grasslands, and other terrestrial ecosystems have played a substantial role in offsetting human carbon emissions—a capability that UC Berkeley researchers say would be threatened by continued global change.

A schematic representation of the processes enhancing the land carbon sink (left) and the processes limiting the net land carbon sink (right). The past, present and future of the sink are determined by the combined result of enhancing and limiting processes. Graphic courtesy of Ruehr, Keenan, Williams, et al.

The assessment, published today as a new review paper in Nature Reviews Earth & Environment, presents a comprehensive analysis of hundreds of scientific research articles and explores the complex interactions between the Earth’s ecosystems and the atmosphere. These terrestrial ecosystems—collectively referred to as the land carbon sink—aborsb approximately one-third of anthropogenic carbon emissions annually, and thus have effectively lessened the impact of greenhouse gas emissions linked to humans.

“Research has greatly advanced our understanding of the carbon cycle and the Earth’s capacity to regulate climate change,” said Environmental Science, Policy, and Management (ESPM) PhD candidate Sophie Ruehr, lead author of the review. “The land carbon sink has served as a buffer, offsetting a significant portion of human carbon emissions and helping to stabilize the global climate.”

According to the review, the combination of carbon fertilization—where plants take up additional carbon from the atmosphere while reducing water lost to evaporation—and warmer temperatures in the northern hemisphere helped the land carbon sink double from the 1960s to the 2010s. Without that increase, the authors estimate that the atmospheric concentration of carbon dioxide would have exceeded 500 parts-per-million by 2020.

“We’ve been the beneficiaries of a built-in offset to climate change through the increasing natural land sink,” said co-author Trevor Keenan, a professor in ESPM and scientist in the Climate and Ecosystem Sciences Division at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. “But this natural capacity will likely run out.”

Through their review, the authors show that deforestation, land-use changes, and climate-induced stresses such as drought and extreme weather have continually reduced the land sink’s capacity to assimilate carbon. Keenan warns these trends will likely worsen—particularly if carbon emissions by humans do not taper off—and could cause the land biosphere to shift from a sink to a source of carbon within the next several decades.

“If the land carbon sink stops taking up a significant portion of our greenhouse gas emissions and shifts to a source of carbon, we may see a rapid increase in CO2 concentrations in the atmosphere, accelerating the pace of climate change,” said Ruehr.

The review offers policymakers, researchers, and environmentalists valuable insights on climate change mitigation strategies and the future direction of the land carbon sink. “Implementing sustainable land management practices is one way to increase the land sink further, and an essential part of the solution to the climate crisis,” Keenan said.

Read the full review at Nature Reviews Earth & Environment.

News & Events

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  From the tops of tree canopies to the bottom of groundwater reservoirs, a vast amount of living organisms interact with nonliving components such as rock, water, and soil to shape this area of Earth known as the “critical zone.” Over half of Earth’s microbes are located in the subsurface critical zone, which ranges from…

Carl Steefel Honored in Goldschmidt Session on Reactive Transport2 min read

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DOE Funds Projects to Advance Forest Carbon Dioxide Removal Efforts and Agricultural Soil Carbon Conservation4 min read

August 1, 2023

The DOE Office of Fossil Energy and Carbon Management (FECM) and Office of Technology Transitions (OTT) recently announced $5 million in funding for four projects–two from Berkeley Lab with EESA leadership. The projects selected offer “promising solutions” to the nation’s climate change challenges by helping to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and will “accelerate their deployment…

EESA Scientists Close Rhizosphere Microbiome Knowledge Gaps4 min read

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The rhizosphere–the region of soil surrounding plant roots in which soil and microbes closely interact–plays an important role in soil carbon cycling. The rhizosphere is only about 1-2% of Earth’s soil volume but can store up to 30-40% of Earth’s total soil organic matter. Plants secrete organic compounds such as amino acids or enzymes known…

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