“Trees versus grass; which is the better carbon sink?” | Earth.com

Grasslands, sucking up CO2 and putting it underground

I thought I recalled an article years ago which suggested that grass is a good carbon sink. In some cases better than trees. So I went looking and found this article, clipped below.

I’m not suggesting here that we should be chopping down trees and planting grass. And neither is the article. Oh, no. Just that it seems from this University of California study, we must consider the type of forest and whether it's a carbon-sink or carbon-producer.

For some Californian forests, it seems it's the latter. In which case grasslands are better. And climate models need to take account. 

Yet we've seen no talk around this. It's not part of "the conversation.”

/Snip:

Most of us learn when we are young that trees intake carbon dioxide and produce oxygen. And while this is a well-known and useful fact, we often don't dive much deeper than that. How efficient are trees as carbon consumers? In a world that is desperately looking for a solution to greenhouse gas emissions, are there more efficient natural ways to remove the carbon dioxide from our atmosphere? A new study published in the journal Environmental Research Letters may just answer these questions.

While forests consume roughly a quarter of the human-caused carbon dioxide pollution worldwide, there are some forested areas that are now lacking in efficiency. Researchers from the University of California, Davis have found that grasslands and rangelands are better carbon sinks than forests in present-day California. Years of warming temperatures, fire suppression, and drought have increased wildfire risks – which has turned California's forests into carbon producers more than carbon consumers.

Trees store much of their carbon within their leave and woody biomass, while grass stores most of its carbon underground. This means that when a tree catches fire, it releases its stores of carbon back into the atmosphere. But when a fire burns through grasslands, the carbon fixed underground tends to stay in the roots and soil. READ ON...