Limiting climate warming to 1.5oC requires reductions in greenhouse gas emissions and carbon dioxide (CO2) removal. While various CO2 removal strategies have been explored to achieve global net-zero greenhouse gas emissions and account for legacy emissions, additional exploration is warranted to examine more durable, scalable, and sustainable approaches to achieve climate targets. Here we show that preserving woody debris in managed forests can remove gigatons of CO2 from the atmosphere sustainably based on a carbon cycle analysis using three earth system models. Woody debris is produced from logging, sawmill, and abandoned woody products, and can be preserved in deep soil to lengthen its residence time (a measure of durability) by thousands of years. Preserving the yearly produced woody debris in managed forests has the capacity to remove 769-937 Gt CO2 from the atmosphere cumulatively (10.1-12.3 Gt CO2 yr-1 on average) from 2025 to 2100 if its residence time is lengthened for 100-2,000 years and after 5% CO2 removal is discounted to account for CO2 emission due to machine operation for wood debris preservation. This translates to a reduction in global temperatures between 0.35 - 0.42oC. Given the large potential, relatively low cost and long durability, future efforts should be focused on establishing large-scale demonstration projects for this technology in a variety of contexts, with rigorous monitoring of carbon dioxide removal, its co-benefits and side-effects.
Yiqi Luo, Ning Wei, Xingjie Lu, Yu Zhou, Feng Tao, Quan Quan, Cuijuan Liao, Lifen Jiang, Jianyang Xia, Yuanyuan Huang, Shuli Niu, Benjamin Houlton, Xiangtao Xu, Ying Sun, Ning Zeng, Charles Koven, Liqing Peng, Steve Davis, Pete Smith, and Fengqi You, Yu Jiang, Lailiang Cheng
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