Abstract
The growth of the global terrestrial sink of carbon dioxide has puzzled scientists for decades. We propose that the role of land management practices—from intensive forestry to allowing passive afforestation of abandoned lands—have played a major role in the growth of the terrestrial carbon sink in the decades since the mid twentieth century. The Forest Transition, a historic transition from shrinking to expanding forests, and from sparser to denser forests, has seen an increase of biomass and carbon across large regions of the globe. We propose that the contribution of Forest Transitions to the terrestrial carbon sink has been underestimated. Because forest growth is slow and incremental, changes in the carbon density in forest biomass and soils often elude detection. Measurement technologies that rely on changes in two‐dimensional ground cover can miss changes in forest density. In contrast, changes from abrupt and total losses of biomass in land clearing, forest fires and clear cuts are easy to measure. Land management improves over time providing important present contributions and future potential to climate change mitigation. Appreciating the contributions of Forest Transitions to the sequestering of atmospheric carbon will enable its potential to aid in climate change mitigation.
Highlights
Our aim in this paper is to complement the thoughtful analysis of Houghton (2020) on the global carbon cycle and echo his emphasis on the benefits of “understanding the potential for land management to remove CO2 from the atmosphere and understanding the processes responsible for the sink for carbon on land.” Here we draw attention to the role of land management in the ongoing growth and thickening of the terrestrial carbon stock
Neither bookkeeping models nor global land models as elements of earth system models acknowledge the full effect of Forest Transitions on the carbon sink of terrestrial ecosystems
Including the effects of Forest Transitions especially on changes of carbon density in vegetation and soils can contribute to improved understanding of the global carbon cycle
Summary
Our aim in this paper is to complement the thoughtful analysis of Houghton (2020) on the global carbon cycle and echo his emphasis on the benefits of “understanding the potential for land management to remove CO2 from the atmosphere and understanding the processes responsible for the sink for carbon on land.” Here we draw attention to the role of land management in the ongoing growth and thickening of the terrestrial carbon stock. In the decades since 1950, often without significant changes in forest area, forest biomass density has increased. Changes in forest management and forest products industries have complemented the changes in the food sector in driving the terrestrial sequestration of carbon.
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