Climate News: Forest Carbon Storage Declines Across Western U.S.
Our forests and trees provide many ecosystem services including the ability to sequester and store carbon from the environment, but due to widespread drought and wildfire, storage has declined across the Western United States with declining trees. Scientists predict more carbon and carbon storage loss to come which means our ability to mitigate against climate change will worsen.
Using the data from the US Forest Service, scientists were able to develop a new way to track and determine forest-carbon storage at regional levels meaning we will have a way to carefully monitor carbon storage moving forward which is important for our fight against climate change.