Changes in terrestrial carbon stocks

Over the past three decades, most of the carbon absorbed by land has been stored in non-living reservoirs such as soil, dead wood and sediments, rather than in the world’s forests. This surprising finding comes from research carried out as part of the European Space Agency's (ESA) Climate Change Initiative (CCI) “REgional Carbon Cycle Assessment and Processes” (RECCAP-2) project, which found that land absorbed around 35 gigatonnes of carbon between 1992 and 2019, with only 6% of this stored in living vegetation such as trees.