Mature Forests as Carbon Sinks

Contradicting 40 years of accepted scientific wisdom, an exhaustive new study says that old-growth forests are actually important carbon sinks and not carbon-neutral. Writing in the journal Nature, scientists at Oregon State University say that a study of 519 forest plots in the northern hemisphere shows that old-growth forests may be responsible for about 10 percent of the carbon absorbed globally by oceans, plants, trees, and other sources. Conventional wisdom, based on a limited study from the late 1960s, was that old-growth forests lost their ability to absorb carbon and were carbon neutral. In calculating the global greenhouse gas balance for the 1997 Kyoto Protocol treaty, scientists agreed with these earlier findings and did not include old-growth forests in national carbon budgets. The new findings underscore the importance of preserving old-growth forests, which can continue sequestering carbon for many centuries, the researchers say.