{"id":409083,"date":"2022-09-28T13:35:53","date_gmt":"2022-09-28T11:35:53","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/innovationorigins.com\/?post_type=selected&p=409083"},"modified":"2022-09-28T13:35:53","modified_gmt":"2022-09-28T11:35:53","slug":"forests-dont-absorb-carbon-consistently-new-study-finds","status":"publish","type":"selected","link":"https:\/\/ioplus.nl\/archive\/en\/selected\/forests-dont-absorb-carbon-consistently-new-study-finds\/","title":{"rendered":"Forests don’t absorb carbon consistently new study finds"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
Why we write about this topic:<\/summary>

Decarbonizing our planet is an essential and difficult task. With these new research findings, it will be possible to meassure the effects of climate policy more accurately. <\/p><\/div><\/details>\n\n\n\n

Forests and woodlands do not sequester carbon as reliably as previously assumed, say reasearchers from the Ludwig-Maximilians-Universit\u00e4t M\u00fcnchen (LMU) in a press release<\/a>. They have developed a new method that makes it possible to assess the direct effects of human land use on the carbon cycle from Earth observation data.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Vegetation and soils are the main carbon sinks on land, as they currently absorb almost a third of carbon dioxide emissions caused by humans and thereby substantially help to slow down global warming. Alongside energy production and industry, land use contributes substantially to global anthropogenic CO2<\/sub> emissions. However, forests and woodlands do not sequester carbon as reliably as previously assumed: Their function as a carbon sink is subject to large annual fluctuations and they are susceptible to various environmental influences even without direct human activity. This was revealed by the results of a new modeling approach developed by a team under LMU geographer Prof. Julia Pongratz.<\/p>\n\n\n

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Human and environmental influences distinguished<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

According to these results, not only direct human activities such as deforestation or re-\/afforestation determine the effectiveness of the forest as a carbon sink. Natural environmental factors such as forest fires and extreme weather events, and indirect anthropogenic influences such as increasing atmospheric CO2<\/sub> concentration additionally influence the amount of carbon that can be sequestered by trees and other woody vegetation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

To better understand these dynamics, Selma Bultan, a member of Pongratz\u2019s team and lead author of the study, has developed a methodology that enables scientists to distinguish the direct effects of human land use on global CO2<\/sub> fluxes from those of natural environmental factors on the basis of satellite and other Earth observation data. \u201cWe integrate Earth observation data into a model that simulates CO2<\/sub> fluxes from land use. Colleagues from NASA provided us with new global vegetation data covering the last twenty years,\u201d explains Selma Bultan. The development of this new modeling approach was possible thanks to the extensive spatial and temporal coverage of the data.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Climate change<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

\u201cOur study tackles the challenge of separating direct human influences through land use from indirect side effects and natural processes,\u201d explains Pongratz. \u201cThis differentiation is important, because isolating the direct anthropogenic effects shows the true progress achieved by climate protection measures. The environmental effects, by contrast, indicate how reliably the biosphere on land absorbs and stores CO2<\/sub> from the atmosphere.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The study also addresses the question of how climate change affects the ability of vegetation to store carbon. \u201cOur results show that the CO2<\/sub> sink in forests and woodlands is subject to stronger annual fluctuations and responds more sensitively to extreme events like droughts than previously assumed\u201d, continues Bultan. \u201cThanks to these findings, we can better estimate the potential contribution of land use to climate protection \u2013 for instance, through the use of technologies to actively remove CO2<\/sub> from the atmosphere.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Researchers can now draw on an extensive database of remote sensing images from satellites for integration into process-based models to foster our understanding of the global carbon cycle and to monitor how climate change evolves and how successful climate protection measures to mitigate it are. <\/p>\n\n\n

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EIT InnoEnergy is bringing business to decarbonization by building coalitions via the European Green Hydrogen Acceleration Center (EGHAC).<\/div><\/div><\/div>","protected":false},"author":2537,"featured_media":515686,"template":"views\/single-selected.blade.php","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"advgb_blocks_editor_width":"","advgb_blocks_columns_visual_guide":""},"categories":[42],"tags":[69773,39766],"location":[24456],"internal_archives":[],"class_list":["post-409083","selected","type-selected","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-sustainability-nl","tag-co2-2","tag-klimaatverandering","location-germany"],"blocksy_meta":[],"acf":[],"featured_img":"https:\/\/ioplus.nl\/archive\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/08\/wind-3769141_1920.jpg","coauthors":[],"author_meta":{"author_link":"https:\/\/ioplus.nl\/archive\/author\/wesley-klop\/","display_name":"Wesley Klop"},"relative_dates":{"created":"Posted 4 years ago","modified":"Updated 4 years ago"},"absolute_dates":{"created":"Posted on September 28, 2022","modified":"Updated on September 28, 2022"},"absolute_dates_time":{"created":"Posted on September 28, 2022 1:35 pm","modified":"Updated on September 28, 2022 1:35 pm"},"featured_img_caption":"","tax_additional":{"category":{"linked":["Sustainability<\/a>"],"unlinked":["Sustainability<\/span>"],"slug":"category","name":"Categories"},"post_tag":{"linked":["co2<\/a>","klimaatverandering<\/a>"],"unlinked":["co2<\/span>","klimaatverandering<\/span>"],"slug":"post_tag","name":"Tags"},"language":{"linked":["EN<\/a>"],"unlinked":["EN<\/span>"],"slug":"language","name":"Tags"},"post_translations":{"linked":["pll_63340e5a24abb<\/a>"],"unlinked":["pll_63340e5a24abb<\/span>"],"slug":"post_translations","name":""},"location":{"linked":["Germany<\/a>"],"unlinked":["Germany<\/span>"],"slug":"location","name":"Locations"},"internal_archives":{"linked":[],"unlinked":[],"slug":"internal_archives","name":"Internal Archives"}},"series_order":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ioplus.nl\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/selected\/409083","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ioplus.nl\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/selected"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ioplus.nl\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/selected"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ioplus.nl\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2537"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ioplus.nl\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/515686"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ioplus.nl\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=409083"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ioplus.nl\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=409083"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ioplus.nl\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=409083"},{"taxonomy":"location","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ioplus.nl\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/location?post=409083"},{"taxonomy":"internal_archives","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ioplus.nl\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/internal_archives?post=409083"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}