land area needed to sequester CO2 by planting trees
To sequester all of the annual atmospheric increase in CO2 with a citrus forest having a 30 tons per hectare per year CO2 uptake[1], an area equivalent with 0.8 that of Australia would need to be in active cultivation. A juvenile forest would sequester for some 20 years until the forest reached maturity. Henceforth, trees would need to be replanted and if the dead wood were left to decompose and return carbon to the atmosphere, the sequestration value would be for ‘just’ 20 years. …Hypothetically it does not sound like such a bad deal, 20 years. Yet again, the Australian outback is indeed enormous, equivalent with 50 times the area of New Mexico or 20 times Oman. Clearly massive scale reforestation should be widespread globally. Ambitious? God yes! Worth it? Hell yes!