Which changes in forestry practices would make plants and soils more efficiently remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere?
Forests in the United States are being managed to produce harvestable fiber and maintain cover, increase water storage, and retain litter. One major challenge is to slow the rate of deforestation. If this trend could be reversed and if reforestation occurs, some modeling studies suggest that, globally, forests could sequester from 200 to 500 billion tons of carbon by 2090. These values are large and controversial, and estimating the potential for carbon sequestration is one of the research challenges. A big challenge is to determine how to manage forest nutrients to achieve both profitable productivity and net carbon storage. Strategies are needed to address both fertilization and incorporation of forest residue into soils. How can more carbon be stored in soils and plants? More carbon can be stored below ground by increasing the depth of soil carbon, boosting the density of carbon in the soil, and decreasing the rate at which soil carbon decomposes. CSITE will be focusing initially on
