Mitigating Impacts Through Carbon Sequestration

New England has one of the most extensive forested landscapes in the United States, storing a tremendous amount of carbon. By sequestering and storing carbon, forests can be one of the main ways we can mitigate against the adverse impacts of climate change, if we conserve and manage them well.

Where Does Carbon Go? A forest’s carbon pool, whether in the Great Lakes or the Northeast, is distributed with slightly more stored belowground in roots and the soil than aboveground in trunks, branches, and leaves. (Kramer et al. 2017)

In addition to direct storage of carbon in trunks and roots of trees and other vegetation, natural systems can sequester large amounts of carbon in the soil. According to a 2017 study at  Washington State University, the uppermost three feet of soil holds three times as much organic carbon as the total amount of carbon in the atmosphere. Studies indicate that, since the beginning of the industrial revolution, land use change and poor soil management have released more than a hundred billion tons of carbon from the soil, a major contribution to total atmospheric carbon.

Up to twenty percent of carbon fixed by photosynthesis in plants is exuded into the soil through roots. Fungi, including mycorrhiza, bacteria, and other organisms in healthy soil are essential to the process of transforming and storing carbon, mostly as organic matter, in the soil. Trees, shrubs, and meadow grasses can all be effective at sequestering and storing carbon in the soil.

Carbon balance in soil. Carbon balance within the soil (brown box) is controlled by carbon inputs from photosynthesis and carbon losses by respiration.  Decomposition of roots and root products by soil fauna and microbes produces humus, a long-lived store of soil organic carbon.  © 2012 Nature Education. All rights reserved.