Uncertainty in US forest carbon storage potential due to climate risks

Forests have considerable potential to mitigate anthropogenic climate change through carbon sequestration, as well as provide society with substantial co-benefits. However, climate change risks may fundamentally compromise the permanence of forest carbon storage. Here, we conduct a multi-method synt...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Published in:Nature geoscience 2023-05, Vol.16 (5), p.422-429
Main Authors: Wu, Chao, Coffield, Shane R., Goulden, Michael L., Randerson, James T., Trugman, Anna T., Anderegg, William R. L.
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
704/158/2165
704/158/47
Anthropogenic climate changes
Anthropogenic factors
Carbon
Carbon capture and storage
Carbon offsets
Carbon sequestration
Climate change
Divergence
Earth and Environmental Science
Earth Sciences
Earth System Sciences
Emissions
Environmental risk
Forest conservation
Forest management
Forests
Future climates
Geochemistry
Geology
Geophysics/Geodesy
Human influences
Lakes
Land surface models
Machine learning
Modelling
Permanence
Restoration
Uncertainty
Citations: Items that this one cites
Items that cite this one
Online Access:Get full text
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
Description
Summary:Forests have considerable potential to mitigate anthropogenic climate change through carbon sequestration, as well as provide society with substantial co-benefits. However, climate change risks may fundamentally compromise the permanence of forest carbon storage. Here, we conduct a multi-method synthesis of contiguous US forest aboveground carbon storage potential at both regional and species levels through a fusion of historical and future climate projections, extensive forest inventory plots datasets, machine learning/niche models, and mechanistic land surface model ensemble outputs. We find diverging signs and magnitudes of projected future forest aboveground carbon storage potential across contrasting approaches, ranging from an average total gain of 6.7 Pg C to a loss of 0.9 Pg C, in a moderate-emissions scenario. The Great Lakes region and the northeastern United States showed consistent signs of carbon gains across approaches and future scenarios. Substantial risks of carbon losses were found in regions where forest carbon offset projects are currently located. This multi-method assessment highlights the current striking uncertainty in US forest carbon storage potential estimates and provides a critical foundation to guide forest conservation, restoration and nature-based climate solutions. Projections of forest aboveground carbon storage potential in the United States show divergent results across different modelling approaches due to uncertainties in the estimated impact of climate risks, according to a comparison of modelling results.
ISSN:1752-0894
1752-0908
DOI:10.1038/s41561-023-01166-7