Detail of a photo: Maze of layered canyon walls and buttes in bands of red, cream and grey, receding into the distance in soft evening light.
GeoLog

biomass

The beetle, the storm, and the carbon sink: On Europe’s climate defence and its deterioration

October 26, 2026
The beetle, the storm, and the carbon sink: On Europe’s climate defence and its deterioration

Imagine standing in the middle of an eighty-year-old Norway spruce forest in Central Europe. The canopy overhead forms a dark, emerald tomb that locks away decades of atmospheric carbon. For years, climate models and European policy frameworks treated mature forests like this as permanent carbon fortresses, heavy-duty biological vaults absorbing roughly 0.2 petagrams of carbon …[Read More]

Geosciences Column: Using tall trees to tot up tropical carbon

February 5, 2014

Forests in the tropics account for about half the above-ground carbon on Earth and as the trees grow older they are capable of storing more and more. In fact, their carbon-storing potential is so large that they are increasingly being viewed as a means of mitigating climate change. Take, for example, the United Nations effort to …[Read More]