A recent study has revealed that most of the carbon stored on land is not in trees, but in soil and water. Researchers analyzed data from remote sensing technologies and field observations between 1992 and 2019 to find a significant increase in terrestrial carbon stocks over the last decade.
The team, led by Yinon Bar-On at California Institute of Technology, discovered that around 35 gigatons of carbon were sequestered on Earth’s surface during this period. This represents a 30% increase from 0.5 gigatons per year to 1.7 gigatons per year. However, vegetation, mainly forests, accounts for only 6% of these gains.
Instead, the study found that around 90% of terrestrial carbon accumulation occurs in non-living pools, including soil organic matter and sediments at the bottom of lakes and rivers. Human activities such as dam construction, artificial pond creation, and timber use also contribute to this process.
The results suggest that most terrestrial carbon gains are stored in a more enduring manner than in living vegetation. This new understanding has significant implications for validating future dynamic global vegetation models, which have previously overestimated the role of forests in terrestrial carbon sinks.
This study is published in Science, providing valuable insights into the distribution of carbon on Earth’s surface and highlighting the importance of non-living pools in carbon sequestration.
Source: https://phys.org/news/2025-03-trees-carbon-sequestered-soil.html