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The headline is unnecessarily sensationalist. A mature forest is never a carbon sink. Trees can only store so much carbon before there is no more room for them
by praptak 5y ago
The headline is unnecessarily sensationalist. A mature forest is never a carbon sink. Trees can only store so much carbon before there is no more room for them to grow.
Obviously, burning a forest is still bad from the CO2-in-atmosphere point of view. Not because you have destroyed a carbon sink but because you released carbon from an existing carbon reservoir.
- JumpCrisscross 5y ago> mature forest is never a carbon sink Not never [1]. But never ca. 300 m.y.a. [1] https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/mushroom-evolution-breaks-down-lignin-slows-coal-formation/ https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/mushroom-evolutio...
- praptak 5y agoThis hypothesis is being contested: https://www.pnas.org/content/113/9/2442 https://www.pnas.org/content/113/9/2442 Although yes, if the old trees don't decompose (for whatever reason), then the forest becomes in fact a carbon sink.