How much carbon does nature absorb?
Direct estimations of above-ground biomass dynamics produced by Chloris Geospatial reveal new insights on how much carbon is stored in woody vegetation around the world (trees, shrubs,), and how these carbon pools have changed over time.
Here are 5 surprising insights from Chloris’ public data set looking at above-ground biomass dynamics from 2003-2019 per country and states.
China has been the world's largest, national terrestrial carbon sink for the past two decades. It absorbed over 16 billion tons of CO2e. That is almost 40% of all carbon dioxide that the world’s above ground biomass has absorbed between 2003-2019.
United States: In 2019, the United States could count on 37.9 billion tons of above ground biomass in woody vegetation, slightly less than China (40.5 billion tons of above-ground biomass). Over the course of the period of the dataset, the United States absorbed 3.97 billion tons CO2e making it the second largest sink of carbon in the world after China.
Brazil, home to the Amazon forest, has by far the largest stock of woody vegetation on the planet: 115 billion tons of above-ground biomass in 2019 (equivalent to 211 billion tons of CO2e). This crucial store of natural vegetation and biodiversity is however subject to large amounts of natural and anthropogenic disturbances. Reversing those trends is critical to stabilize the climate.
The Democratic Republic of Congo is the largest store in Africa, with almost 46 billion tons of above-ground biomass on its territory in 2019. This makes it the third largest national pool of above-ground biomass in 2019. It has drawn down the sixth largest amount of carbon of all countries during 2003-20019, 1.24 billion tons of CO2e.
The European Union is the fourth largest sink behind only China, the United States, and India, taking up over the period over 3.3 billion tons of CO2e. Only 4 out of the 27 countries were sources of emissions (Finland, Sweden, Latvia, and Austria), and France is the largest sink: over the period 2003-2019 has taken up over 775 million tons of CO2e. Despite fires and droughts, woody vegetation in the mediterranean countries all drew down carbon from the atmosphere (Italy 444 million tons CO2e, Spain 429 million tons CO2e and Greece 336 million tons CO2e).
Our approach (time-series based direct estimation of above-ground biomass) overcomes major shortcomings of commonly used spaceborne remote-sensing. Crucially, it goes beyond monitoring deforestation and captures more subtle vegetation dynamics such as degradation and growth of biomass. As a consequence, it reveals a more complete picture on how much carbon nature absorbs.
Our commercial product delivers insights at operational resolution, for any area of interest on the planet.