Integrated global assessment of the natural forest carbon potential

Forests are a major terrestrial carbon sink, but anthropogenic changes in land use and climate have considerably reduced the scale of this system1. Remote-sensing estimates to quantify carbon losses from global forests2–5 are characterized by considerable uncertainty, and we lack a comprehensive ground-sourced evaluation to benchmark these estimates. Here, we combine multiple ground-sourced6 and satellite-derived approaches2,7,8 to evaluate the scale of the global forest carbon potential outside of agricultural and urban lands. Despite regional variation, the predictions demonstrated remarkable consistency at a global scale, with only 12% difference between the ground-sourced and satellite-derived estimates. Currently, global forest carbon storage is significantly below the natural potential, with a total deficit of 226 Gt (model range = 151-363 Gt) in areas with low human footprint. Most (61%, 139 Gt C) of this potential is in areas with existing forests, where ecosystem protection can allow forests to recover to maturity. The remaining 39% (87 Gt C) of potential lies in regions where forests have been removed or fragmented. Although forests cannot be a substitute for emissions reductions, our results support the idea2,3,9 that the conservation, restoration, and sustainable management of diverse forests offer valuable contributions to meeting global climate and biodiversity targets.

Please download the 'Code' folder from GitHub: https://github.com/LidongMo/ForestCarbonPotentialProject.

Due to file size limitations, please download the 'Data/BiomassMergedMaps' folder from a separate Zenodo repository: https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.10118245