Re:Microsoft’s Remarkably Big Bet on Carbon-Absorbing Rocks
by GlibMonkeyDeath on Friday September 08, 2023 @02:42PM
(#37437640)
Yes, they emit some carbon when they decay, but not all of vegetation goes back into CO2, so even mature forest is an overall carbon sink. New forest is an even larger carbon sink.
Estimates of the carbon sink per km2 are about ~200-400 Ton/km2/yr or ~2-4 Ton/ha/yr (Slope of curves in Fig 7 in https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-021-99395-6) To absorb our current 10 GTon C (~30 GTon CO2) we would need ~30-50 M km2 of area; Arable (crop) land area is ~15 M km2 (~10% of Earth's total land area) and grassland is ~30 M km2. Clearly we aren't going to turn nearly all of arable/grass land area to forests, but vegetation management could be a significant part of carbon management.
Estimates of the carbon sink per km2 are about ~200-400 Ton/km2/yr or ~2-4 Ton/ha/yr (Slope of curves in Fig 7 in https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-021-99395-6) To absorb our current 10 GTon C (~30 GTon CO2) we would need ~30-50 M km2 of area; Arable (crop) land area is ~15 M km2 (~10% of Earth's total land area) and grassland is ~30 M km2. Clearly we aren't going to turn nearly all of arable/grass land area to forests, but vegetation management could be a significant part of carbon management.