Nature – Matthews et al. (2023): Accounting for the climate benefit of temporary carbon storage in nature
H. Damon Matthews, Kirsten Zickfeld, Alexander Koch, Amy Luers IN: Nat Commun 14, 5485; https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-023-41242-5
Nature-based climate solutions can contribute to climate mitigation, but the vulnerability of land carbon to disturbances means that efforts to slow or reverse land carbon loss could result in only temporary storage. The challenge of accounting for temporary storage is a key barrier to the implementation of nature-based climate mitigation strategies. Here the authors offer a solution to this challenge using tonne-year accounting, which integrates the amount of carbon over the time that it remains in storage.