Thread by @geoengineering1

🚨In a new study published in @OneEarth_CP, researchers reveal that human land activities have stripped away roughly 24% of terrestrial carbon stocks (equivalent to 344 billion metric tons of C), underscoring an urgent need to reframe land-use & climate policy.

Details🧵1/10

2/ Plants + soils store more carbon than the atmosphere + all fossil reserves combined.

But farming, grazing, and forest use have stripped away this natural shield, turning land from a carbon bank into a carbon source.

3/ Researchers call this loss the terrestrial carbon deficit - the gap between what ecosystems could hold (‘potential’) vs. what they actually hold (‘actual’).

The shortfall? 344 PgC (24% of natural stocks).

4/ Biggest vegetation carbon deficits:

—Subtropics & temperate zones outside rainforests.

Largest soil carbon deficits:
—Temperate & boreal regions

China, Brazil, Europe, and the US emerge as hotspots

5/ Major drivers include:

— Pasture expansion (≈30%)
— Cropland expansion (≈24%)
— Forest management (≈23%)

These land-use changes disrupt carbon retention by reducing both biomass and soil organic carbon (SOC).

6/ According to this study, Dynamic Global Vegetation Models (DGVMs) underestimate this deficit by an average of 37%, ranging from 2% to as much as 58%.

This suggests a widespread underappreciation of the scale of carbon loss in current modelling frameworks.

7/ Researchers concluded that, the terrestrial C deficit (~344 PgC) ≈ 70% of all fossil fuel emissions since 1750.

Addressing this “hidden debt” requires aligning emission cuts with large-scale ecosystem restoration & better integration of land-use science into climate models.

8/ For more details, read the study entitled "Humans have depleted global terrestrial carbon stocks by a quarter" here:


#CarbonSink #CarbonBudgetsciencedirect.com/science/articl…

9/ Here’s the short explainer of this paper’s findings:

You can also listen to the discussion on this paper here:
youtu.be/g5YWI698dV4?si…

Or here:
open.spotify.com/episode/15EMxm…

🧵10/10 #CarbonStock #CarbonSink

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