“Trees are feasting on decades of carbon dioxide emissions and growing bigger as a result, according to a new study of U.S. forests.
Scientists tracked wood volume in 10 different tree groups from 1997 to 2017, finding that all except aspen-birch grew larger. Over that same period, carbon dioxide levels went from 363 parts per million to 405 parts per million, owing largely to the burning of fossil fuels. More abundant CO2 accelerates photosynthesis, causing plants to grow faster, a phenomenon known as “carbon fertilization.” The findings were published in the journal Nature Communications.”
As Carbon Dioxide Grows More Abundant, Trees Are Growing Bigger, Study Finds – Yale E360
From the study itself: “It is not clear, however, whether the tree-volume and C-sink increase have been driven by forest recovery from past land uses, such as agriculture7, or other environmental factors such as elevated CO2, N deposition, or climate change8. Even less well understood is the role of forest management through planting, harvesting of secondary and old-growth forests, and forest management that is certified with sustainability criteria, even though these approaches are employed on an increasingly large share of the world’s forests”