UK woodlands could store almost twice as much carbon as previously estimated

According to a new study, the UK's forests could store almost double the amount of carbon as previously thought.

The international team of scientists used a novel 3D scanning technique and analysis to assess the amount of aboveground biomass in a UK woodland. The team found that their results were much higher than they had previously thought.

The potential underestimation of forest carbon stocks has both positive and negative consequences for climate policy according to the authors.

The co-author of the study said that forests act as a carbon sink. For every ha of woodland lost, we're potentially losing almost twice the carbon sink capacity we thought, as a result of our finding that the carbon storage capacity of typical UK woodland could be nearly double what we thought.

It has serious implications for our understanding of the benefits of protecting trees.

The study was a collaboration between researchers from the UK's National Centre for Earth Observation and others. In order to establish their findings, the team undertook 3D laser scanning in a part of Wytham Woods. In 3D, the environment and structures of trees in the woodland are captured with millions of laserpulses.

The carbon storage capacity of the area and the mass and volume of the trees were calculated using statistical modeling.

The authors say that their study brings into question the certainty of estimates of forest carbon storage across the UK, particularly for the largest and most carbon- heavy trees, which are currently based on widely used models. It's likely that previous studies underestimated the amount of wood in the UK.

Most estimates of forest carbon stocks are based on simple allometric models that assume that a tree's size and mass increases at a steady rate. These models are not representative of the UK forests.

The models work well for trees less than 50 cm in diameter, which are fairly uniform in terms of their size and volume, but not for larger trees. When it comes to structure, these are much more complex than you might think.

A quarter of countries' current commitments to their Paris Agreement targets are due to forest protection and restoration.

The authors say that the models used to report the UK's biomass stock have resulted in significant under-reporting.

Over 70 years of detailed scientific research has been witnessed by the co-author of the study. The research shows how new approaches can yield surprises in well-studied forests, with profound consequences for our understanding of forests and their role in tackling climate change that applies across the UK and beyond.

The journal Zenodo publishes related research.

Mat Disney and his team showed potential underestimation of carbon in the forest. It's called 10.1002/2688 8319.12197.

There are individual trees and quantitative structure models in the data. You can find it on thezenodo.