Re-posting from the Nerd Corner about this cool new study in Nature looking at methane emissions and absorption from trees around the world. The lead author also wrote an article about it in The Conversation.
In short, the study found that near the ground surface, some trees emit a small amount of methane from their base. But the higher up the trees were measured, the more methane the trunk was found to remove from the atmosphere. This is due to methane-absorbing microbes in the tree bark. This was especially true for tropical and temperate trees, due to a higher prevalence of these microbes thriving in warmer and wetter conditions.
![586d22fe3492da1ca9750154c3d3a145-huge-sc](/user_content/forums/topics/photos/37059/586d22fe3492da1ca9750154c3d3a145-huge-screen-shot-2024-07-24-at-10.04.05-am.png)
The US is in the temperate zone, and the southeastern region of the country where we have a lot of forests meets these general conditions. Lead author Vincent Gauci wrote,
In total, our cautious first estimate is that trees take up between about 25 and 50 million tonnes of atmospheric methane each year, with most taken up by tropical forests.
This is similar to the only other land-based methane sink – soils – and it makes temperate and tropical trees 7%-12% better for climate than they are currently credited for … This new evidence reinforces the importance of trees and forests for our climate system
The 7% improvement in climate benefit was for temperate forests like in the US, and 12% for tropical forests like in Brazil. In short, healthy forests are even better for the climate than we thought! 🤓
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