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Published March 21, 2025 | Published
Journal Article Open

Recent gains in global terrestrial carbon stocks are mostly stored in nonliving pools

Bar-On, Yinon M.1, 2 ORCID icon
Li, Xiaojun3, 4 ORCID icon
O'Sullivan, Michael5 ORCID icon
Wigneron, Jean-Pierre3 ORCID icon
Sitch, Stephen5 ORCID icon
Ciais, Philippe6 ORCID icon
Frankenberg, Christian1 ORCID icon
Fischer, Woodward W.1 ORCID icon
  • 1. ROR icon California Institute of Technology
  • 2. ROR icon Weizmann Institute of Science
  • 3. INRAE, UMR1391 ISPA, Université de Bordeaux, Villenave d'Ornon, France.
  • 4. ROR icon Southwest Jiaotong University
  • 5. ROR icon University of Exeter
  • 6. ROR icon Laboratoire des Sciences du Climat et de l'Environnement
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Abstract

Terrestrial sequestration of carbon has mitigated ≈30% of anthropogenic carbon emissions. However, its distribution across different pools, live or dead biomass and soil and sedimentary organic carbon, remains uncertain. Analyzing global observational datasets of changes in terrestrial carbon pools, we found that ≈35 ± 14 gigatons of carbon (GtC) have been sequestered on land between 1992 and 2019, whereas live biomass changed by ≈1 ± 7 GtC. Global vegetation models instead imply that sequestration has been mostly in live biomass. We identify key processes not included in most models that can explain this discrepancy. Most terrestrial carbon gains are sequestered as nonliving matter and thus are more persistent than previously appreciated, with a substantial fraction linked to human activities such as river damming, wood harvest, and garbage disposal in landfills.

Copyright and License

© 2025 The Authors, some rights reserved; exclusive licensee American Association for the Advancement of Science. No claim to original U.S. Government Works.

Funding

Rothschild Postdoctoral Fellowship (Y.M.B.-O.); Resnick Sustainability Institute (Y.M.B.-O., W.W.F., C.F.); David and Lucile Packard Foundation (W.W.F.); Schmidt Science Fellows (Y.M.B.-O.). X.L. was supported by the European Space Agency (ESA) RECCAP2 project. J.-P.W. acknowledges support from the CNES (Centre National d’Etudes Spatiales) TOSCA programme. S.S. was supported by ESA RECCAP2 [contract nos. 4000123002/18/I-NB (RECCAP2-A) and 4000144908/24/1-LR (RECCAP2-CS)].

Acknowledgement

We thank A. Flamholz, W. Schleisinger, Y. Yin, Y. Yao, T. Schneider, A. Renchon, R. Milo, G. Grassi, P. Wennberg, and M. Santoro for productive feedback on this manuscript.

Contributions

Conceptualization: Y.M.B.-O., W.W.F., C.F.; Methodology: Y.M.B.-O., W.W.F., C.F.; Provided data: M.O., S.S., J.-P.W., X.L.; Investigation: Y.M.B.-O., W.W.F., C.F.; Visualization: Y.M.B.-O.; Funding acquisition: Y.M.B.-O., W.W.F., C.F.; Supervision: S.J.E., M.J.M., J.L.S., E.H.; Writing – original draft: Y.M.B.-O., W.W.F., C.F.; Writing – review & editing: Y.M.B.-O., W.W.F., C.F., M.O., S.S., J.-P.W., P.C.

Data Availability

All data are freely available from the cited references or from the following sources: Liu et al. dataset (https://wald.anu.edu.au/global-biomass/) and the biomass product based on the SMOS-IC v2 L-VOD data from reference (38), which is available upon request from J.-P.W. All code used to analyze the data and produce the results can be found in reference (39).

Supplemental Material

Supplementary Materials PDF file includes:

  • Materials and Methods
  • Supplementary Text
  • Figs. S1 to S19
  • Tables S1 and S2
  • References (40–106)

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Additional details

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March 25, 2025
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