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Credit: WUR

Measurements show decreasing CO2 uptake by the forests

Recently, the Loobos facility was in the national newspaper NRC with an article about the decreasing CO2 uptake of forests. The article is about the changing role of forests in the global carbon cycle. In Loobos, the CO2 uptake by the forest is measured. 

Researcher Michiel van der Molen points out that ‘over the last several decades, only 45% of the CO2 emitted by humans ended up in the atmosphere, vegetation on land and the oceans absorbed 30 and 25% of it. Under influence of more frequent droughts, heat waves and fires, forests on a global scale are experiencing stress, resulting in less CO2 uptake from the atmosphere. Since this feedbacks on the atmospheric CO2 concentration and the rate of climate change itself, it could be an accelerating process. We need to think about the forests of the future, the climate they will grow in and how they can cope with climate extremes. Possibly, increasing the forest composition and increasing the biodiversity could be one way out of the emerging problem’.

Click here to read the full article (only in Dutch).