Research: Tree Cover on Agricultural Land, Often Ignored, Helps Mitigate Climate Change
Agroforestry — integrating trees into cropland or pastureland — is often discussed as a promising strategy for helping to ease the threat of climate change because trees are particularly good at sucking carbon dioxide from the air and socking it away for the long term. However, most global and regional calculations of carbon capture and storage, including those of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, ignore farm forests. That could change, thanks to a new study published in Scientific Reports that takes a look at trees on agricultural land and quantifies the powerful role they play in sequestering carbon.
Using estimates of global farmland tree cover derived from remote sensing observations, a team of researchers from Asia, Africa and Europe calculated the amount of carbon captured and stored by trees growing on farmland. When carbon stored by these trees was included, total carbon storage for agricultural land measured more than four times higher than current IPCC default values. “These results show that existing tree cover — thus far ignored in most global and regional calculations — makes a major contribution to the carbon pool on agricultural lands,” the researchers wrote.
Neil Palmer/CIAT