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Can Planted Forests Counteract Increasing Atmospheric Carbon Dioxide?
Author(s) -
Vitousek Peter M.
Publication year - 1991
Publication title -
journal of environmental quality
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.888
H-Index - 171
eISSN - 1537-2537
pISSN - 0047-2425
DOI - 10.2134/jeq1991.00472425002000020003x
Subject(s) - reforestation , environmental science , biomass (ecology) , atmosphere (unit) , fossil fuel , carbon sequestration , afforestation , carbon dioxide , carbon dioxide in earth's atmosphere , agroforestry , greenhouse gas , forestry , ecology , geography , biology , meteorology
Establishing new forests has been widely suggested as a means to prevent, reduce, or delay fossil fuel‐driven increases in CO 2 concentrations in the atmosphere. This analysis examines the potential magnitude of C storage in biomass, emphasizing the amount of land area that could be planted to trees, the rates of C storage in developing forest plantations, and the fate of material harvested from forests. I conclude that while converting old‐growth forests to plantations is a losing proposition, there may be sufficient formerly forested land and the possibility of sufficiently high rates of C storage in young tree plantations that reforestation could remove substantial quantifies of C from the atmosphere (≥1 Pg yr −1 ). However, rapid net C storage is a short‐lived phenomenon, and it is unlikely that a substantial fraction of material harvested from plantations can go into long‐term storage on land. Therefore, new tree plantations designed to store C can at best cause a brief delay in the accumulation of CO 2 in the atmosphere. Forest plantations designed to produce energy from biomass would represent a longer‐term contribution to reducing rates of CO 2 accumulation—as long as they replaced fossil fuel‐derived energy.