Carbon Sequestration

Defined as the storage of carbon in a solid material, usually through a biological or physical process, carbon sequestration is regarded as an effective way to reduce the accumulation of greenhouse gasses in the planet’s atmosphere by locking up the carbon in a solid form.

Human activity over thousands of years has caused the release of sequestered carbon into the atmosphere with estimates that over half of the wood harvested in the last 10,000 years has been burned for fuel. This is still true of wood usage today.

Human ingenuity is developing new technologies which will help to sequester carbon released by our activities. However, nature has already developed a simple and highly effective sequestration technology called “trees”.

For every tonne of wood a forest grows, 1.47 tonnes of carbon dioxide is replaced with 1.07 tonnes of oxygen (source: Society of American Foresters).