What is it about?
The study focused on temperate forests in northeastern North America. “The findings challenge a widely held belief that tree growth slows or plateaus in larger, older trees,” said John Schwartzmann, a career forester with the Bureau of Commissioners of Public Lands . “Instead, we found that most tree species in our region continue to sustain or even accelerate their growth even in the largest trees we measured. This is great news both for foresters seeking to increase sawtimber production and for all those wanting to reduce greenhouse gases and reduce climate change.”
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Why is it important?
Temperate forests play a vital role as significant carbon sinks, offsetting a substantial portion of the nation's CO2 emissions. This study found that previous forest management tools and models significantly underestimate current rates of wood and biomass growth especially in bigger trees. Here are some key findings: • All 20 species displayed continuous increases in growth (in basal area, biomass and carbon accrual) through the largest diameters measured. • Several factors contribute to this acceleration in growth, including plant competition (taller trees overtop competitors and get more light), increased capacity for water and nutrient acquisition through larger root systems, and increases in atmospheric CO2 and nitrogen deposition which have boosted the growth of many temperate tree species. • The research suggests that proper thinning accelerates this growth increase in bigger trees, enhancing wood production and stored biomass and carbon.
Perspectives
This research underscores the critical importance of protecting older forest stands and large trees as they contribute the most to a forest's ability to absorb and sequester carbon and then store that carbon as wood. Our findings actually underestimate this remarkable capacity of big trees to fix and store carbon as we did not quantify below-ground biomass or carbon in roots and soils.
Donald Waller
University of Wisconsin Madison
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: Allometric equations quantify accelerated growth and carbon fixation in trees of northeastern north America, Forest Ecosystems, December 2025, Tsinghua University Press,
DOI: 10.1016/j.fecs.2025.100347.
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