In California, University of California, Santa Cruz researchers calculated the capacity of North American forests to sequester carbon in a detailed analysis that, for the first time, integrates the effects of two key factors: the natural process of forest growth and regeneration, and climate changes that are likely to alter the growth process over the next 60 years.
“There’s a lot of hope that our forests will soak up the carbon dioxide we’re producing, but the capacity of our forests is limited,” said lead researcher Kai Zhu, an assistant professor of environmental studies at the University of California, Santa Cruz.
Unlike previous attempts to quantify forests’ capacity to sequester carbon, using simulation models or satellite data, Zhu’s findings are based on exhaustive, ground-based measurements of forests across the United States and Canada, including 140,000 plots in the U.S. Forest Inventory and Analysis program and the Canada Permanent Sample Plots program.
